2 ms·

I'm just one guy so I have to start somewhere :] Sometime soon though, it will be possible to select the location.

by delano 16y ago

mayank 16y ago
Unfortunately, I think the parent commenter is right -- your numbers are (currently) meaningless. Statistically, your sample size for estimating response time is 1 for each of those sites. You need at least a dozen or so monitor sites, preferably distributed in the same way that Internet users are, for anything meaningful information to be gained. Ideally, you'd also want to distribute your monitors taking peering agreements of the ISP, etc. into account for a truly representative picture of response times. As it stands, you're doing a disservice to startups that aren't on EC2, for no good reason. You solution "works" on a technical level, but the data is statistically meaningless.
- delano 16y ago
  Combining monitoring data from multiple locations would give a more accurate response time overall. But as a site owner, that number is not very useful because it's not actionable. For example, if response times to my site become slow from say, Dallas or Ireland, there's is nothing I can do about it other than be aware that it's happening. Monitoring from a single location is interesting because it gives a metric for how well my application is performing.
  - mayank 16y ago
    Certainly, but I would say that there are very few Internet startups that cater to a single (or even a few) geographical locations. Your numbers currently indicate quality of service for customers in the same hosting block as Amazon EC2. If you have enough monitors and spread them out well (which shouldn't be too hard, since you could just sign up for Perl/PHP enabled hosting accounts in different locations), you can still diagnose where the slow geographical regions are. In short, having more data can only give you a more accurate picture, depending on how you analyze it.
IgorPartola 16y ago
I know how you feel. I built http://www.pingbrigade.com/ http://www.pingbrigade.com/ which is similar. Mine runs of VPS's though.
bdb 16y ago
Your design is great and helping people to make their web sites faster is laudable goal. Add more testing locations -- even better, write a probe that you can run on various consumer broadband connections that will report results back centrally. Please don't go fire up a bunch of VPSes around the globe for performance monitoring -- that data is largely useless. Build an image, load it onto a bunch of Pogoplugs, send them out to some friends who live in various parts of the world (and various parts of the US with various kinds of broadband!)

I'm just one guy so I have to start somewhere :] Sometime soon though, it will be possible to select the location.

by delano 16y ago

I'm just one guy so I have to start somewhere :] Sometime soon though, it will be possible to select the location.

Unfortunately, I think the parent commenter is right -- your numbers are (currently) meaningless. Statistically, your sample size for estimating response time is 1 for each of those sites. You need at least a dozen or so monitor sites, preferably distributed in the same way that Internet users are, for anything meaningful information to be gained. Ideally, you'd also want to distribute your monitors taking peering agreements of the ISP, etc. into account for a truly representative picture of response times. As it stands, you're doing a disservice to startups that aren't on EC2, for no good reason. You solution "works" on a technical level, but the data is statistically meaningless.

delano 16y ago
Combining monitoring data from multiple locations would give a more accurate response time overall. But as a site owner, that number is not very useful because it's not actionable. For example, if response times to my site become slow from say, Dallas or Ireland, there's is nothing I can do about it other than be aware that it's happening. Monitoring from a single location is interesting because it gives a metric for how well my application is performing.
- mayank 16y ago
  Certainly, but I would say that there are very few Internet startups that cater to a single (or even a few) geographical locations. Your numbers currently indicate quality of service for customers in the same hosting block as Amazon EC2. If you have enough monitors and spread them out well (which shouldn't be too hard, since you could just sign up for Perl/PHP enabled hosting accounts in different locations), you can still diagnose where the slow geographical regions are. In short, having more data can only give you a more accurate picture, depending on how you analyze it.

IgorPartola 16y ago

I know how you feel. I built http://www.pingbrigade.com/ http://www.pingbrigade.com/ which is similar. Mine runs of VPS's though.

bdb 16y ago

Your design is great and helping people to make their web sites faster is laudable goal. Add more testing locations -- even better, write a probe that you can run on various consumer broadband connections that will report results back centrally. Please don't go fire up a bunch of VPSes around the globe for performance monitoring -- that data is largely useless. Build an image, load it onto a bunch of Pogoplugs, send them out to some friends who live in various parts of the world (and various parts of the US with various kinds of broadband!)