How To Perform Distributed Website Monitoring?

Posted by cballou on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by cballou
Published on 2010-03-17T00:21:12Z Indexed on 2010/03/17 0:31 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 350

Filed under:

linux

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php

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uptime

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network-monitoring

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hosting

I would like to know how sites like the following perform distributed website monitoring (from multiple checkpoints/countries).

pingdom.com, site24x7.com, uptrends.com, siteuptime.com, etc, etc.

To be exact, what process would occur in checking if a given domain name went down? If the server finds that the site is down, what is the next step? Would it make a REST API request to a separate server to run the same test and report the results?

I have a few theories, including:

utilizing host(s) from different countries
utilizing proxies from different countries

I'm looking for the most proper or correct way to handle this, which can include the usage of servers from multiple countries/hosts.

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