NetMechanic's World-Wide Web Site Server Watch Reveals Business as Usual

How did the world's Web site servers fare as the 20th century passed into history?

Huntsville, AL (3 January 2000)-Webmasters around the world sharing a common concern about site performance this weekend needn't have worried; everything went smoothly as most sites were up and running as normal. NetMechanic Server Check service tracked 131 selected servers around the world during the Y2K transition and found that some of them actually fared better than ever as the millennium approached and settled in. Most simply maintained and carried on, keeping the world's Web sites accessible and available to millions of visitors through the holiday weekend.

Targeted servers for the test included those supporting the Web sites of multi-national corporations, governmental agencies, educational institutions, media, national utilities and Internet service providers (ISPs). The servers, chosen at random to represent six continents and several economic centers of the world, were checked every 15 minutes for 24 hours, beginning at 12:00 AM December 30, 1999 and continuing until 11:00 PM Eastern Standard Time January 1, 2000. Summaries for each of the three days illustrated positive trends overall in server response.

"A test like this would indicate regions of the world that affected by the Y2K bug," said Jeff Morgan, CEO of NetMechanic. "NetMechanic Server Check service monitored the Web site servers of the world during the transition to 2000, to track global trends. The few errors observed were not catastrophic. The servers, and thus the Web sites, weren't rendered unusable, the responsiveness merely slowed in some cases. The value to our subscribers and those trying the service over the New Year's weekend was obvious: if the servers had begun to fail - even fail to deliver the appropriate content - Server Check would have notified them immediately."

Server Check monitors Web servers every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days per week from multiple, geographically separated monitoring stations, detecting problems in upstream connectivity. It reports a summary of performance statistics weekly via email as well as providing detailed, real-time performance statistics on demand, allowing Webmasters to tune their servers for quicker response times and more efficient operation. Application monitoring by NetMechanic Server Check helps ensure that sites built via CGI (Common Gateway Interface), Active Server Pages, Cold Fusion or other dynamic technologies are serving content correctly.

Server Check problem alerting is fully configurable for email notification, alphanumeric or cell phone page. Options include server not responding, server slow to respond, missing keywords on a site page and server performance below a desired level. Redundant problem verification ensures that both NetMechanic monitoring stations compare a server's performance and send an alert only if they both see the same problem. Server Check is completely online, eliminating the need to download and install software onsite. Server Check is available at http://www.netmechanic.com in Free Sample and Subscription versions.

A regional breakdown of the number of sites tested during the transition follows:

Europe 40
Middle East 5
Africa 6
Australia 5
Asia 20
USA 50
Central & South America 5

Of the 131 sites monitored, 13 were offline for at least an hour during the two-day period around the New Year. "That may sound like a lot," says Morgan, "but it's about what you'd normally see when monitoring this many servers." At any given time, Morgan notes, between two and four percent of Web servers are offline for some reason. "Over the course of several days, it's typical to see about 10% of servers having an outage. We really can't say that Y2K had any noticeable effect."

More about NetMechanic
NetMechanic's superior online services are targeted toward Webmasters for all types and sizes of Web sites. Since most users do not have control of the computer hosting their site, existing desktop or server-based maintenance applications cannot adequately address user needs for Web site improvement and monitoring. NetMechanic addresses these concerns by monitoring and testing sites from its own strategically located remote Web servers, allowing easy setup with no software downloads.

NetMechanic provides a full range of site maintenance tools in the HTML Toolbox subscription service and site monitoring with Server Check Pro. The primary components of the HTML Toolbox product include Spell Check, Load Time Check, GIFBot, Link Check, HTML Check and Browser Compatibility services. These services are offered in both free trial and subscription versions that will test sites of all sizes. NetMechanic also offers Server Check Pro, a subscription service which monitors Web site servers 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.

NetMechanic's service offering is rounded out with EngineStarter, a site promotion tool that submits Web sites to the top 100 search engines. An unrivaled feature of the service is a report from NetMechanic that informs the subscriber whether the site was accepted by each search engine for consideration - along with a link to the site that rejected the submission.

NetMechanic, an independent Internet software development firm based in Huntsville, Alabama developed the online tools provided through the NetMechanic Web site. For more information contact Cindy O'Gorman at (256) 533-0076, ext. 116 or by email at cindy.ogorman@netmechanic.com. For information regarding NetMechanic's Partners Program, contact Todd Gandy at (256) 533-0076, ext. 114, todd.gandy@netmechanic.com or visit the company's Web site at http://www.netmechanic.com.

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