Category: Network Services Monitoring

Akamai DNS Outage – Akamai Technologies Goes Down Many Clients Offline

Aug. 1, 2013 – Dotcom-Monitor tracked an Akamai DNS outage today.

Dotcom-Monitor clients that utilize Akamai may have received error messages associated with the Akamai DNS outage lasting from 5-7 minutes starting at approximately 11:01 am CDT.

The Akamai DNS outage, though brief, is only one of several high-profile DNS outage issues that has occurred in the past year. In the recent past, Dotcom-Monitor has detected several high-profile DNS outages for its clients, including…

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DDoS Attacks on Banks | Cyber Attacks on US Banks Continues

If you bank with anyone larger than a local credit union, it’s likely your bank’s website has been attacked within the past few months as recent denial-of-service cyber attacks have increased in both frequency and severity. An April 2013 NBC News report found that in the six weeks prior, 15 of the nation’s largest banks were offline for a total of 249 hours due to denial of service cyber attacks.

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IPv6 Requires a New Approach to Website Monitoring

Dotcom-Monitor has established a Native IPv6 Monitoring Bureau dedicated to effective end-to-end IPv6 website performance monitoring. Dotcom-Monitor tests for performance and accessibility and can also simulate real user activities such as validating text and images as well as portal logins and shopping cart functionality.

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Online Banking Outage: Wells Fargo down

Dotcom-Monitor is tracking a Wells Fargo down website based on a consistent failure to connect host issues that began at approximately April 4, 12 PM CST. Dotcom-Monitor has been tracking a history of banking website outages for several months and has provided analysis of banking outages for the financial industry for issues involving recent PNC bank outages, U.S. Bancorp outages, and a previous Wells Fargo outages.

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Tracking DNS: The Network Solutions DNS errors

April 2, 2013 – Network Solutions DNS, a major provider of domain name server (DNS) services, experienced an issue over the Mar 30-31, 2013 weekend resulting in many websites, including websites owned by Dotcom-Monitor clients, having website DNS time out errors. Intermittent Network Solution DNS issues were noted late afternoon and evening hours on March 29. Dotcom-Monitor then began tracking consistent DNS time out errors involving Network Solutions DNS servers early on Saturday morning, March 30, 2013. The Network Solutions DNS servers involved were NS22.WORLDNIC.COM (206.188.198.11) and NS21.WORLDNIC.COM (205.178.190.11).

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DNS Monitoring Improves Web Site Speed and Reliability – Part 2

Dotcom-Monitor uses a non-cache DNS monitoring solution with high frequency monitoring that propagates DNS queries to the root name servers. That means a DNS issue will be identified quickly, as opposed to being masked for days as it might be with a cached monitoring approach. When monitored properly, using a non-cache method, an error is quickly identified so the designated workaround, like a DNS failover, can be implemented.

Dotcom-Monitor non-cached DNS monitoring (unlike some other cache-based DNS monitoring solutions) also provides diagnostics with an automated trace-route as soon as a DNS problem is detected. This means less time investigating the problem and much faster mean-time-to-repair (MTTR). The Dotcom-Monitor DNS monitoring solution also allows website owners to spot trends so that small DNS issues can be addressed before they become big DNS problems.

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DNS Monitoring Improves Web Site Speed and Reliability – Part 1

The only way to know how well or how reliably DNS servers perform is to make consistent, regular objective tests and measurements over time. While DNS servers can be verified manually, that is not a practical solution. Manually checking the DNS servers a few times a week, or even a few times a day, simply does not provide enough data to accurately judge performance, nor does it quickly alert website owners to problems. Automatic DNS monitoring gives website owners the information needed.

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