Using web hosting services normally presumes storing content located on a remote server that is available online 24x7x365, which means that such a hosting server is powered and connected to the Internet constantly. A very important notion in web hosting technology is uptime. Wikipedia defines it in the following way: “Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet“, therefore, if a customer is paying for hosting services, it is crucial for him to expect and receive the maximum uptime values. Although hosting companies do apply various monitoring techniques to track server’s state at any given moment of time, no technology is perfect and thus it is important to perform your own independent uptime monitoring, which may come in handy in emergency situations. So how do you measure uptime values correctly? Should you expect a 100% uptime? What web site monitoring tools are available to a regular user? These questions are not as simple as they appear at a first glance. Information in this article will be useful to those interested in understanding and monitoring uptime of an account or server. Read the rest of this entry »