01/10/2017

Why a Website Monitoring Service with Full Protocol Check is Important for Websites?

Checking the availability and response times of websites have become mandate for online businesses to provide better user experience to their customers. Downtime and performance issues can prove costly to online businesses because it affects the customer experience, business revenues and brand reputation. No matter how big or small the site may be, it is critical to have website monitoring service to avoid downtime losses and ensure continuity of websites. As a website owner, if you have made the decision to opt for website monitoring, then you need to look for a quality service that provides comprehensive features with maximum protection offering to your website. One of the important features to look for in a monitoring service is a full protocol check for your website.

What is a Protocol and How is It Important to a Website?

Simply put, protocols are standard methods to exchange information between systems. Different types of protocols with different functionality, work together to keep a website active. For instance, the HTTP protocol helps to process the data between the browser and the server. When an attempt is made to access a website, the browser sends a HTTP request to the server. If the request is successful, the server responds with the data. Otherwise, the server sends an error code accompanied by the standard error message indicating the reason for failed response. Similarly, there are many protocols that are meant for exchange of data over the internet, file transferring, email etc. Some of the most common protocols are HTTP/HTTPS, SMTP, POP3, TCP, Ping, FTP, ICMP and others. The protocols that are critical to website working, need to have continuous check to ensure proper functioning. An issue with any one of them can take the website down, making it unavailable to the users.

What Happens When Protocol Fails?

When a protocol referring to a specific functionality fails, the server doesn't respond to the requests. For example, if there is an error in POP3 or SMTP protocols, the delivery of the mails across the internet will not happen. Similar is the case with TCP/IP networking protocol. If there is any issue with TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) there will be a problem with sending and receiving of information across the network. There are many such technical things that are involved in working of your websites. A problem occurring in any one of these aspects, can make your website experience downtime & performance issues.

How a Quality Monitoring Service Handles Protocol Failures?

It is quite difficult for a business owner to understand and follow all these concepts unless the person has some technical knowledge. In such cases, having a quality monitoring service with comprehensive features is quite helpful because the service will have the ability to handle such critical issues. The service would support different protocol technologies for all of your site monitoring and server monitoring needs. They take the responsibility of protecting your websites by keeping a check on all protocols and other aspects that are responsible for your website uptime. The monitoring will happen at regular intervals and if any issue is detected, it will immediately be notified to the website owner. Once the issue is known, you can immediately start working on resolving the problem to get the website back to working.