As web applications become more dynamic and complex, traditional monitoring tools often fall short of providing the insights needed to ensure top-notch performance. Modern web applications rely on numerous interconnected systems and have unique demands, making it essential to adopt monitoring solutions designed to handle their complexity. This post explores why traditional monitoring may not be enough and how advanced solutions like Dotcom-Monitor are better suited for today’s web applications.
Website and Web Application Monitoring
For any web application, consistent monitoring is crucial for maintaining performance, security, and user satisfaction. Traditional website monitoring typically involves tracking uptime and response times for individual pages or services. While these are essential metrics, they barely scratch the surface for modern applications.
Modern web apps are often rich in dynamic, interactive elements that rely on APIs, third-party services, databases, and other complex architectures. These interconnected systems make monitoring more challenging and require a broader range of metrics beyond simple uptime. Monitoring tools need to capture a holistic view of the application’s performance, including response times for specific functions and individual elements, to quickly detect and troubleshoot potential issues.
HTTP Monitoring
HTTP monitoring is a traditional approach to monitoring web traffic, focusing on the HTTP requests and responses between users and web servers. It can provide insight into issues like request failures, slow responses, or connectivity errors, which are fundamental for any web app.
However, HTTP monitoring alone doesn’t cover all the bases for modern applications. While it provides an overview of request-response cycles, it misses out on deeper metrics, such as backend processing times, API latency, and individual resource performance. These applications often require tracking at the component level rather than solely the HTTP layer.
Modern Web Applications and Pages
Modern web applications bring unique monitoring needs, which often require detailed metrics to identify and resolve issues. Here are some of the critical metrics that modern applications demand:
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Connection Time: Monitoring connection times helps ensure that the connection between the client and server is stable and responsive. Long connection times can lead to a laggy experience and frustrate users.
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Network Latency: Network latency measures the time it takes for data to travel between the server and client. High latency can slow down the entire app experience, especially for geographically dispersed users.
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Database Connectivity: Since modern applications rely heavily on database interactions, monitoring database connectivity and query response times is essential. This helps to quickly identify issues like database timeouts or connection bottlenecks.
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Bandwidth: Tracking bandwidth usage provides insights into data transfer rates, which is essential for apps handling high traffic or large amounts of data, like streaming services.
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Hardware Resources: Monitoring server CPU, memory, and disk usage ensures the infrastructure can handle the application’s workload. Hardware strain can impact performance, leading to slower page loads and response times.
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Downtime of Every Page Element: In modern applications, each page element (buttons, images, scripts) plays a role in delivering a seamless experience. Monitoring each element’s availability helps pinpoint issues more precisely.
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Performance Under Load: Simulating heavy user load and measuring application performance can help reveal potential bottlenecks. This is especially critical for e-commerce or high-traffic sites during peak times.
These metrics are vital for understanding how well each part of the application performs individually and collectively. Unlike traditional monitoring, which may only offer a high-level view, these detailed metrics allow you to be proactive about ensuring a smooth, fast user experience.
Connection Time
Today’s rapidly moving world has made people impatient, that they cannot wait for a page to load for a long time. Users are likely to abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Time To First Byte (TTFB) can be affected by the following:
- Sending Request to the server
- Processing and generating the response
- Sending the request back to the client
To resolve this, the effectiveness of the web server needs to be monitored.
Network Latency
With the evolution of cloud technologies, such as Single Page Applications (SPAs), Web APIs, and Model View Controller (MVC), network latency has become a crucial factor to be monitored.
Network latency can be affected due to
- Network equipment like cable or router
- Wi-Fi usage
- Viruses
- The number of users using the connection
- Software that’s running
Monitoring of the network for the applications using the network, traffic, and bandwidth allocations can improve the network latency.
Database Connectivity
Present-day applications make more much use of the database. Retrieval of the dynamic data needs to effortless and guaranteed every time. Occasionally, the reason for the slow responding site will be the performance of the database. Thus, optimizing the database will have to be done frequently in conjunction with monitoring.
Bandwidth
One important aspect of performance is the full page load time. It’s crucial for a page to load at considerable speed with all the images, videos, content, and all other elements of the page. Since every user is different, it’s difficult for every user to have enough bandwidth to support proper page load time. If there is going to be any interruptions in the request or response during the page load time, then winning the user will be put to a question. The protocols used and the amount of multimedia content on the workload needs to be monitored. Concurrent launches on streamed applications can also be a case for the bandwidth spike.
Hardware Resources
Effective usage of hardware resources can help in capacity planning and provide a better end-user experience. This includes monitoring items like CPU usage, memory consumption, I/O, network, and disk usage. They all play an integral part in the process and are significant aspects that need to be monitored. Database entries and traffic load affect hardware performance, therefor, keeping track of the hardware resource is of utmost importance.
Uptime of Page Elements
Any website or a web application that users rely on for their entertainment or fundamental needs should try to have an uptime of 99.9%. Frequent downtime is likely going to make the user frustrated and leave your site or application, and ultimately costing the company lost revenue. Every element like text, navigation, headers, graphics, contact options, analytics, footers, contributes to the page load time.
Furthermore, a broken link could cost you more if the link is present on a sales page. Broken links may arise if the destination URL is misspelled or the page does not exist. It gives the user the impression that the site is not maintained properly. For this reason, monitoring every page element is crucial.
Performance During Page Load
It’s very common for a website to have an increase in traffic after a marketing campaign. A few days later, the traffic on the website will get back to the normal state. Hence the website should be tested to ensure that it’s reliable during the traffic hike as well as normal days. A tool like Google Analytics is a gold standard when it comes to tracking and reporting individual page traffic.
Metrics to monitor during page load include the following:
- Start and end time
- Connect time
- Time to first byte (TTFB)
- DOM events
- Errors
- Content size
The purpose of the website determines the paths the user takes. To address the challenges of modern web applications, synthetic monitoring can be the solution. In synthetic monitoring, the behavioral paths of the end users on a web app are scripted. Those scripts are run on particular intervals at different checkpoints and the performance of availability, functionality, response time can be measured. A response time test is calculated through an average of durations of the web transactions simulated on the target website at a given time interval.
For example, for a travel booking site, the flow is likely to be several options and paths: choosing the source, destination, departure, number of travelers, choice of flight, and finally booking order. Each of these paths have to be attained in a trouble-free manner.
By scripting the path and executing them repeatedly, the webmaster can overcome the shortcomings in the availability, performance, and functionality.
Why Dotcom-Monitor is the Best Solution for Modern Web Application Monitoring
When it comes to monitoring the advanced and nuanced aspects of modern web applications, Dotcom-Monitor stands out as a robust, reliable solution. Here’s why Dotcom-Monitor is uniquely suited for today’s web monitoring needs:
Comprehensive Metrics: Dotcom-Monitor captures all the critical metrics needed for modern web applications, including connection times, network latency, database connectivity, and hardware resource utilization.
Element-Specific Monitoring: Unlike traditional tools, Dotcom-Monitor enables you to monitor every page element individually. This is especially helpful for pinpointing specific elements causing slowdowns or availability issues, allowing for quicker troubleshooting.
Global Load Simulation: With Dotcom-Monitor’s load testing features, you can simulate heavy traffic across various global locations, helping to identify potential bottlenecks before they affect real users.
Proactive Alerting and Reporting: Dotcom-Monitor offers customizable alerts and detailed reporting, so you’re notified the moment any part of your application starts underperforming. Real-time alerts help minimize downtime and ensure prompt resolution.
API and Service Monitoring: Many modern applications rely on APIs, and Dotcom-Monitor provides robust monitoring of these services to ensure reliable, fast interactions.
Dotcom-Monitor’s capabilities go beyond what traditional monitoring can offer, giving you the insights and control necessary for modern applications. With Dotcom-Monitor, you’ll be able to maintain optimal performance, identify potential issues proactively, and deliver a consistently smooth experience for your users.
Conclusion
To wrap up, the modern web application and website of today require more than just basic HTTP monitoring. They need to provide a pleasant experience to maintain and win new users. By implementing the correct monitoring method, you can ensure that elements, content, and the user experience is intact and functioning properly. The right synthetic monitoring solution can give you the technology and tools to provide and outstanding user experience for all your complex applications and pages. Try the web application monitoring solution for free.
