Frequent brief outages anyone?

Mysterious repetitive short 1-3 minute dowmtime

[neonrider]

For the last several years I have been experiencing those frequent 1-3 minute (undetectable by software nor by watchdogs; only detectable by physical browsing, constant usage of your sites; constant reloading of pages, constant checking of your mail for extended periods of time, or sometimes - accidentally) downtimes on all my sites including my mail (failed to connect). I usually detect those 103 min. outage accidentally or by constantly using my site(s) for a few minutes or longer at a time. I made "tracert domain.com" and the result seemed to be ok. So as I understand there is a connection during the 1-3 minute outage, but all sites and mail during that outage is inaccessible and returns unavailable error or nothing. I noticed it happens many times per day, every day, or almost every day. The uptime watchdog that watches all my sites for periods of every 15 minutes does not notice or "catch" these 1-3 minute downtimes. I'm afraid that even 1-3 minute downtime for say 24 times a day is insignificant, but it can still make a lot of damage to a business. I don't think it is an issue with the host. Any of you experience this FSD (frequent short downtime) or FBO (frequent brief outages)? If not, try spend 1 to 24 hours constantly browsing and reloading your sites and see if you "catch" some "couple minute downtime" or sometims it can be as little as 10-30 seconds downtime. It shouldn't remain a mystery. Let's find out what those FSD are.

[bill]

Run some site monitoring software and document it. There's no reason to physically sit in front of your PC and refresh the page continually. If it's verifiable it's your host's issue then have them deal with it, or move to another. It's equally possible it's just your ISPs problem.

[Laker]

what type of connection do you have to your isp?

[neonrider]

As I said before site monitoring only monitors in 15 minute intervals. That is not enough to "catch" the 1-3 minute or 30 second downtime. What would be that "some" software? I'd like to leave this issue open in order to hear other's experiences whether someone has this issue with frequent brief downtime.

[pageoneresults]

Can you see the impact of these outages in your statistics? Is it happening for all of your users? I know, that may not be the best question, but we need to rule out any local issues first. Apache or Windows?

[neonrider]

It could be an important issue (1-3 minute frequent downtimes) that could be happening to many webmasters without them knowing about it.

My connection is DSL. As I wrote before, the downtime is not detected by host nor by Master.com, Hyperspin watchdogs because it is less than 15 minutes in duration, therefore no staistics can show such "short" (but potentially damaging) downtimes. One thing I noticed is my sales are down dramatically in September, but I had same downtimes with my previous host for at least 2 last years and the sales were ok or good. But they could be better if we eliminate such 2-3 minute downtimes. Imagne yourself coming to a www.nicename.com and finding it unavailable. Will you wait for 3 minutes? Probably not. Will you come back again? 50% or more possibility that you will not.

I'm not sure this is host's issue. I'd say I wouldn't blame host company for this. I had those downtimes with one host, then I moved and I keep on having them with a new host. I host several bigger sites and a bunch of small ons including one with many photos and some small forums with little members. I'm one person business. I don't have any technical or programming skills other than simple WS FTP and simple Front Page Express software.

The host said it was my sites hitting some imits, so I was moved to a higher plan, but no changes.

Those downtimes I don't catch them often, usually I spot it once a day or so if I continuously use my site for some update or order procesing, then sometimes it slows down and becomes unavailable, then I check all other sites and my mal and it all becomes down for 1-3 minutes. I make traceroute during the downtime and it is ok.

1-3 minute downtime to short to ask someone independent else to quickly access my sites. If only an issue with my ISP then it would be ok. I want to make sure it is not downtime to everywhere (all countries etc.).

[pageoneresults]

If the traceroutes are okay, then that would lead me to believe it is a local issue. You can do various TR testing here...

[traceroute.org...]

My connection is DSL. As I wrote before, the downtime is not detected by host nor by Master.com, Hyperspin watchdogs because it is less than 15 minutes in duration.

Why does the 15 minutes in duration come into play. If I'm not mistaken, our monitors will send a notification within a minute if there are downtime issues.

The host said it was my sites hitting some limits, so I was moved to a higher plan, but no changes.

That would cause problems for sure. Do they have a daily limit imposed?

[neonrider]

Thanks for the link. You think it could be a local ISP issue? I hope so. The limits are usual as with the host. I'm not knowledgeable about the hosting issues, so I can not tell you an exact term. It is called bandwidth, I think. The limits are usually what the limits are with hosting plan at a VPS. Host says I have plenty of server space.

Your monitors monitor every 1 minute? That's better than 15 minutes. I have free service Master.com and Hyperspin. They monitor every 15 minutes. But what if a 30-45 second downtime occur? Even a 10-20 second downtime is capable to send a potential customer into a cyberspace to never return again :-) I'm not panicking though, cause I know that good people always come back to good sites no matter what.