Craig Lowell

DNS: What Can Go Wrong and How You Can Fix It By Ankit Kumar DNS is a core component of the Internet. This rather complex system exists to perform the basic function of translating website Domain names (ex: Catchpoint.com) into an IP address. It acts as the liaison between the language that users can understand, and the address of the data center or destination in which the site is being hosted. DNS is what shapes the modern Internet. It enables users of all skill sets and technical knowledge levels to use this incredibly advanced resource on a daily basis. Businesses that exist entirely on the Internet like online banking and ecommerce companies have not only emerged into the market, but have steadily gained a global presence. Despite its critical role, DNS isn’t impenetrable; even with redundancies and a fast, efficient design, it’s still vulnerable to performance... (more)

Security (SSL) Has a Performance Tax | @DevOpsSummit @Catchpoint #DevOps #ContinuousTesting

Security (SSL) Has a Performance Tax By Mehdi Daoudi While on a call with a customer last week, I was faced with the question of why the customer’s site had slowed down, even after they had switched to full SSL. Well, to be honest, it’s pretty obvious; SSL is more expensive from a web performance perspective. However, it wasn’t until I saw this chart that I realized how bad it has gotten. Every metric jumped, and jumped by a lot! The worrisome spikes here are obviously the render start, onload, and webpage response. The problem is that when you introduce SSL, you are also forcin... (more)

Making the Case for Monitoring Behind the Firewall By @Catchpoint | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Making the Case for Monitoring Behind the Firewall By Dennis Callaghan If you read our blog regularly then you know we’re pretty bullish about our OnPrem Agent product and its behind-the-firewall user-experience monitoring capabilities. What does it mean to monitor behind the firewall? Essentially you’re bringing Catchpoint’s Synthetic Monitoring capabilities to the online applications that run inside your firewall as opposed to on your customer-facing website. OnPrem Agent becomes your own synthetic monitoring node that scripts interactions with these applications and constantly... (more)

Monitoring DNS Load Balancers | @DevOpsSummit @Catchpoint #DevOps #WebPerf

If your website receives heavy traffic and you are hosted across multiple infrastructures across the world or you are using multiple CDNs, then you ought to use a DNS Load Balancer to reroute traffic for better performance. While there are some large companies who create their own DNS load balancing system, which is complex and tedious to implement and manage, some companies make life easier by opting for ready-made solutions such as those from Cedexis, Dyn, NSONE, Rage4, etc. Most of the above mentioned companies are backed by Anycast networks spread across global locations. Wh... (more)

Top 10 Blog Posts | @DevOpsSummit @Catchpoint #APM #IoT #DevOps

Catchpoint's Top 10 Blog Posts of 2015 by Maria Eldridge Web performance issues and advances have been gaining a stronger presence in the headlines as people are becoming more aware of its impact on virtually every business, and 2015 was no exception. We saw a myriad of major outages this year hit some of the biggest corporations, as well as some technology integrations and other news that we IT Ops aficionados find very exciting. This past year has offered several opportunities for growth and evolution in the performance realm — even the worst failures presented valuable lessons ... (more)