With the Hurricane season upon us, it is vital to be up to speed with the current forecasts. In such times, these details can literally be a lifesaver. So, as a part of our contribution to the online community, for a sixth straight year we will be providing free monitoring and alerts to some of the most popular websites that keep their users informed with real-time forecasts, emergency information and donation opportunities when hurricanes, floods, and other natural or man-caused disasters occur.

The reports will reflect the most common performance criteria: response time and availability. In-depth analytical information will also be collected and stored in the WebSitePulse system for future reference. You can find the detailed daily results from the Hurricane Season Web Performance and Uptime Report here.

When you start searching for a reliable monitoring solution, be it to see if you have chosen a good hosting provider or in an attempt to optimize your site, there are some things you need to consider to help you make the most of the monitoring service. Here are a few guidelines will  make this selection process easy.

Identify Your Goals

Choosing a monitoring service is much easier when you know your goals. Most services on the monitoring market offer different monitoring levels, so to select the best one for you, first identify your objective. For example, if you need to be constantly in the loop about the status of your server, a simple server monitoring level at a low interval (say every 10 minutes) will do the trick. However, if you are interested in seeing how your whole website performs, you’d better look into a more sophisticated option, which will verify that all of your website’s components are downloaded properly from an end-user perspective.

In this blog we’ve already discussed the importance of response time. And I hardly need to tell you that when a website loads slowly, you’d rather take your business, reservation, purchase or pleasure somewhere else. So, now that you have your website up and running, you definitely don’t want it to be an underachiever and drive those potential clients away simply because it fails to load properly. So here are 5 simple ways to improve your website response time without too much effort.

Linux is everywhere, sometimes even at places you might not even expect to find it. One device worthy of attention is the SheevaPlug - one of the so-called "Plug Computers". Why the name? Well it is quite obvious if you refer to the image below.

Here is something funny a friend of mine passed on to me a few days ago. Enjoy these common everyday situations described with just as common to network administration terms.

DHCP

You wake up after wild drinking. Your first words are "Who am I?", "Where am I?". Your neighbour, who did not mix vodka with beer, tells you all your data, who you are and where you are. This neighbour behaves like DHCP-server. Note that in the Network there may be so-called "fake DHCP-servers", e.g. your wife, to the question, "Who am I?", may give you false information, "You are an alcoholic". So, obtaining dynamic registration is vulnerable, therefore it's recommended that you write your data (name, address) on a piece of paper.