How to install:

Install Net::HTTP, and copy the shell script to a suitable location.

#!/usr/bin/perl  -w
#
# Program: HTTP Ping <http-ping.pl>
#
# Author: Matty < matty91 at gmail dot com >
#
# Current Version: 1.1
#
# Revision History:
#
# Version 1.1
#     Added checks for arguments
#
# Purpose:
#  Reports latency between a web server and a given host
#
# License:
#   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
#   under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
#   Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any
#   later version.
#
#   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#   GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#   along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
#   Foundation, 59 Temple Place – Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
#
# Usage
#  Usage: http-ping.pl [ -s server ] [ -p port ] [ -d delay ] [ -u uri ] [ -h ]
#
# Example:
#  ./http-ping.pl -s www.fastmonitoring.com -p 80 -d 5 -u /index.html
#   Querying HTTP server www.fastmonitoring.com:80 every 5 seconds (Ctrl-C to stop):
#      Mon Nov 29 18:09:59 2004: TCP Connection Time=0.052s HTTP GET Time=0.051s [Normal Delay]
#      Mon Nov 29 18:10:04 2004: TCP Connection Time=0.036s HTTP GET Time=0.052s [Normal Delay]
#      Mon Nov 29 18:10:09 2004: TCP Connection Time=0.034s HTTP GET Time=0.052s [Normal Delay]

use Net::HTTP;
use Time::HiRes qw (time);
use Getopt::Std;

############################
# Globals                  #
############################
my $httpConnection = 0;
my $content = 0;
my $buffer = 0;
my $buffer_size = 8192;
my $excessive_delay = 1;

####################################
# Get the parameters from the user #
####################################
%options=();
getopts(“d:hp:s:u:”,\%options);

my $delay = defined($options{d}) ? $options{d} : 10;
my $port = defined($options{p}) ? $options{p} : 80;
my $server = defined($options{s}) ? $options{s} : “localhost”;
my $uri = defined($options{u}) ? $options{u} : “/”;

if (defined $options{h} ) {
printf(“Usage: http-ping.pl [ -s server ] [ -p port ] [ -d delay ] [ -u uri ] [ -h ]\n”);
exit(1);
}

#######################################
# Let the user know what we are doing #
#######################################

printf(“Issuing GET request for $uri on HTTP server $server:$port every $delay seconds (Ctrl-C to stop):\n”);

#############################
# Connect to server         #
#############################
while (1) {
# Calculate the time it takes to establish a TCP connection ( SYN, SYN/ACK, ACK )
my $start = time();
my $httpConnection = Net::HTTP->new( Host => $server )
|| die $@;
my $tcpConnectionTime = time() – $start;

# Calculate the time it takes to GET / and process it
$start = time();

$httpConnection->write_request(GET => “$uri”, “User-Agent” => “MTY/1.0.5f”);

while (  $content =  $httpConnection->read_entity_body($buffer, $buffer_size) ) {
}
my $httpConnectionTime = time() – $start;

if ( ($tcpConnectionTime > $excessive_delay) || ( $httpConnectionTime > $excessive_delay))  {
my $dt = scalar localtime time;
printf(“  %s: TCP Connection Time=%.3fs HTTP GET Time=%.3fs [Excessive Delay]\n”,$dt, $tcpConnectionTime, $httpConnectionTime);
} else {
my $dt = scalar localtime time;
printf(“  %s: TCP Connection Time=%.3fs HTTP GET Time=%.3fs [Normal Delay]\n”,$dt, $tcpConnectionTime, $httpConnectionTime);
}

sleep($delay);
}

That’s it. Enjoy!

In accordance with the official press-release,

‘Dotcom-Monitor’s free website monitoring Uptime Meter tool provides customers a unique, easy-to-use, targeted solution for quickly monitoring and validating uptime that affects website performance and revenues. The Uptime Meter is designed to aggregate uptime and automatically update and display the results on the user’s website via the Uptime Meter Button. The Uptime Meter Button displays accurate update metrics, such as “Uptime 99.999%”, based on the aggregated data since the date of original implementation.’

More details can be found here: Dotcom-Monitor’s Uptime Meter.

(http://www.dotcom-monitor.com/StampEdit.aspx)

The switch to IPv6 is on. In June 2008, the U.S. federal government, which is arguably the world’s largest single enterprise, required that all its executive agencies add IPv6 to their network backbones. The European Commission recently set an IPv6 target adoption rate of 25 percent by 2010, and the chairman of the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre predicted that all IPv4 addresses will be depleted by 2011, forcing wide-scale IPv6 adoption. A number of Internet powerhouses, such as Google and Alta Vista, have now deployed IPv6 accessible websites. Operating systems, such as the latest versions of Microsoft Windows, include IPv6 support.

IPv6 will become the essential backbone protocol for next-generation networking. IPv6 boasts improved network reliability, lower costs and improved security in addition to its vastly expanded addressing and routing capabilities (achieved by increasing the address length from 32 to 128 bits). While the benefits of IPv6 are apparent, performance management will becomes inherently more difficult as a single IPv6 subnet is as large as the entire Internet today.

As with IPv4, IPv6 quality of service is implemented at Layer 2 and Layer 3 of the TCP/IP stack. A number of network management vendors support IPv6, but while passive network management tools may comply with the new version, some may not include the evolving set of features for IPv6 support. Alone, passive monitoring may be unable to properly detect performance issues experienced by the end user, and for web-enabled businesses, the end user experience is the most critical element of service quality.

For business and organizations deploying IPv6 websites, performance management and service-level agreement monitoring become more complicated due to the coexistence of IPv4 and IPv6, the exponential size of IPv6 addressing and routing, and the lack of a killer application to drive wide-scale and accelerated deployment.

IPV6 and IPv4 headers are not interoperable. IPv4 is a best-effort service where all packets are treated equally; IPv6 implements quality-of-service (QOS) by classifying IP packets using an 8-bit traffic class field and a 20-bit flow label field in the header. While IPv6 web sites can be accessed using dual stacks, tunneling and protocol translation, native IPv6 performance monitoring is essential to determine whether performance issues are originating in the end-to-end IPv6 environment. Companies that have deployed IPv6 websites must utilize native IPv6 performance monitoring to isolate service-level agreement (SLA) issues for these sites as IPv4 monitoring alone will not help isolate IPv6 QoS issues.

There are several reasons to actively monitor IPv6 websites in a native environment:

• Because there’s a gap between IPv6 capabilities and current network management tools, active monitoring is essential.
• As with any new technology, there is the potential for flaws, which may impact uptime and performance.
• Pv6 will lead to larger networks that directly address more network devices, increasing the overall complexity.
• IPv6 end-to-end security features, while improving security, will make it harder to analyze network traffic.

Dotcom-Monitor has deployed a native IPv6 monitoring bureau to offer end-to-end IPv6 performance monitoring for QOS and SLA management from the end-user perspective. With active web site monitoring using native IPv6, companies deploying IPv6 website can ensure that SLAs are being met specific to IPv6 performance. End-to-end IPv6 performance monitoring is crucial to maximize the return on investment of the deployment and to understand its effects on the IT operations and the business.

Dotcom-Monitor provides extensive real-time reporting using graphical charts that explain success/failure rates for specific performance checks, response/download times, uptime/downtime, load variations by hour/day/week and much more. For e-commerce sites, Dotcom-Monitor will measure quality of service for each phase of the transaction process as well as performance comparisons among different geographic areas. Dotcom-Monitor provides instantaneous notification of website and web application performance issues, based on customer configured notification and escalation parameters.

About Dotcom-Monitor:

Dotcom-Monitor is the leader and innovator in advanced website performance monitoring services. Founded in 1998, Dotcom-Monitor has saved over 3,000 companies money by insuring maximum website uptime — at a cost up to 50 percent less than other web site monitoring services.

Let’s see how to set up the most typical tasks.

I. HTTP Monitoring Usage (non-secure websites).

In most cases you will be asked to specify:

• Task Name: just type in something to identify the current task, i.e.: My Site Homepage;
• Maximum Connection Timeout (in seconds): how many seconds web monitoring server tries to connect to your website before it considers the connection failed and initializes downtime notification process;
• Request Type: Select either GET or POST;
• URL: the URL of the page to be watched, i.e.: http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html;
• Keywords: you provide certain words or phrases from the content of your web page, which web monitoring agents constantly scan the page for. If the agents fail to find the phrase, the page has probably hacked/defaced and the content has been replaced. (An agent is one of the servers of the web monitoring provider that simulates activity of a real user);

II. FTP Server Monitor:

• Task Name: nothing new here, just invent something self explanatory;
• Maximum Connection Timeout: don’t forget that timeout is usually counted in seconds;
• Server: your FTP server, i.e.: ftp://ftp.mysite.com;
• Username, Password: if you want monitoring agents to check the availability of files on your FTP server, provide your login and password;
• Get directory listing: if you select YES, the web monitoring agent will try to get the directory listing;
• Directory: if you specify the directory name here, the agent will switch to this directory just after it gets connected. I.e.: /files/;
• Check File: web monitoring agents will try to check the availability of the file, i.e. my-file.html;
• Download File: if you specify a filename, an attempt to download the file will be made. I.e.: my-file.html.

III. DNS Monitor Usage. If you want to be sure that your DNS server operates correctly all the time, you might want to set up DNS Server monitoring. In this case be ready to provide:

• Task Name: specify a name for the task, e.g.: My DNS Server Monitoring;
• Maximum Connection Timeout: the number of seconds that the monitoring agent (for the “monitoring agent” concept explanation see Part I of the article) is going to try to get the URL resolved before the attempt is considered a failure.
• Server: the name of the DNS server;
• URL to Resolve: the URL that is going to be resolved, e.g. http://www.mysite.com;

IV. UDP (User Data Protocol) monitoring:

• Task Name: specify a name for the task, e.g. UDP monitoring;
• Maximum Connection Timeout (in seconds): 60 is a usual value;
• Server: the server to be monitored, e.g. 122.88.21.11;
• Port: specify the port to use when monitoring agents will try to connect to your server;

V. POP3 (Incoming Mail Server) monitoring: website monitoring agents will try to login to your incoming mail server and get a correct response with a certain frequency.

• Task Name: specify a name for the task, e.g. POP Server Monitoring;
• Maximum Connection Timeout (in seconds): 60 is a usual value;
• Server: your POP3 server(incoming mail server), e.g. pop.somehost.com;
• Login to Server: select YES if you want the monitoring agent to login to your mail server. You will have to provide your e-mail account data for monitoring agents to log in. If you select NO, all the monitoring agent will be able to check is whether your server is up or not.
• User Name: a user name to log in to the POP server;
• Password: your e-mail password;

VI. SMTP (Outgoing Mail Server) monitor usage: website monitoring agents will connect to your SMTP Server and get a correct response with a certain frequency.

• Task Name: specify a name for the task, e.g. SMTP Server Monitoring;
• Maximum Connection Timeout (in seconds): 60 is a usual value;
• Server: SMTP server (your outgoing mail server), e.g. smtp.mysite.com;

VII. SMTP/POP3 (Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Full Cycle) monitoring usage: website monitoring agents will try to send an e-mail and then receive it within a given period of time.

• Task Name: specify a name for the task, e.g. ‘SMTP/POP monitoring task’;
• Maximum Connection Timeout (in seconds): 60 is a usual value;
• SMTP Server: your SMTP server name, e.g. smtp.mysite.com;
• Email to send a test message: e.g. myemail@mysite.com
• POP3 Server: your POP3 server name, e.g. pop.mysite.com;
• POP3 User Name: your username to login to the POP server;
• POP3 Password: your POP3 password;
• Maximum timeout for test message receiving: 60 is a usual default.

These were the most typical tasks to set up in your website monitoring account. In my next guide I’m going to tell you how to deal with notification groups, how to set up phone alerts, and how not to be awaken at 3 a.m. when your website suddenly goes down

Good luck!

What can be done to avoid losses? Jeremy recommends monitoring the landing pages with website monitoring services. If a landing page goes down or gets accidentally removed, you will be the first who finds out.

• Dotcom-Monitor – Affordable Web site monitoring and testing for individual sites, applications, and networks. We offer load testing, network monitoring and free website monitoring trials.
• WebSitePulse – Remote web server and website monitoring with instant alerts via SMS, e-mail, and phone when your website becomes unavailable. Real-time monitoring reports and diagnostic tools help you minimize website downtime. Global worldwide monitoring locations. Free monitoring service available.
• WatchMouse – Web site monitoring service for web server performance measurement. Free and paid remote web site and server monitoring
• Webmetrics – Website Performance Monitoring, Web Application Performance Monitoring, Load Testing
• Uptrends – a leading provider of hosted website and server monitoring services. Reduce costly downtime. Free 4 week trial!
• Service Uptime – Free website monitoring service checks your site from worldwide locations and alerts you instantly via email or SMS when it becomes unavailable. Detailed uptime statistics and performance reports available.
• HostTracker – Website Uptime Monitoring Service
• Siteuptime provides website monitoring services. Receive instant email notices when your website becomes unavailable and view detailed uptime statistics and performance reports for your website monitors.

The more time and money you invest in your start-up, the more important the question of reputation and trustworthiness is. There is a basic rule: your e-business must be accessible every second to every Internet user from all over the world. Downtime for any reason is completely unacceptable. And that’s why you should consider runnings website performance tests and signing up for a web site monitoring account.

Let’s see how website monitoring works. As I’ve already said, your website must be accessible every second to every Internet user. To ensure your site is available throughout the world, website monitoring services set up special servers, called Monitoring Agents, in data centers on all the continents (excluding Antarctica ). The monitoring agents check your web server with a set frequency. Quite a lot of stuff can be monitored: HTTP/HTTPS servers, FTP, POP3/SMTP, IMAP, DNS, ICMP, UDP, video streaming servers and much more. If one or more monitoring agents report downtime, an alert message for the webmaster is generated. Currently, notification options include:

• email
• regular and cell phones
• sms
• fax
• pagers
• …

Most advanced website monitoring services are capable of doing multi-step actions: for example, monitoring agents can login to your clients’ zone, choose a DVD in your online-store, then go to the shopping cart and “buy” it, ensuring availability of all the payment steps for an ordinary customer.

Today web site monitoring companies offer a wide range of services. The pricing also varies greatly. Here on fastmonitoring.com I’ll try to provide as much info as possible to help you choose your web site monitoring service.