Frequently Asked Questions

Find the answers to our most frequently asked questions.

My ISP/Host already monitors my site - why do I need Axzona's Monitoring?

Some ISPs or hosts offer "site monitoring services" as part of their package and some even offer a pro-rata refund for downtime beyond the Service Level Agreement (SLA). SLAs are generally "policed" using only internal or local monitoring techniques which are unable to detect many of the problems encountered by end-users. These may include backbone network outages and slowdowns, failed peering arrangements and faulty routing advertisements. Consequently, companies or service providers currently monitoring their networks using local software still have a vital need for Axzona's ExternalMonitoring solution.

What types of service can Axzona Monitor?

We can monitoring Webservers (including secure HTTPS servers), mail servers, FTP servers, XML Webservices etc. If it's on your website, we can monitor it for you.

How will I be notified if there is a problem?

If our monitoring agents receive no response from your website or the protocol returns an incorrect or slow result, the error will be recorded and then verified by other monitoring agents at diverse points around the UK Internet. If verification confirms the error, an alert will be sent to you. Depending on the service level you choose, alert notifications will be sent via email and/or SMS text message or directly into your Operations Management Console via SNMP Trap. Alert scheduling and escalation options also help to ensure that the right people in your organisation are alerted at the right time. In addition, alerting can be disabled during scheduled maintenance periods.

Do I need to install any software on my webserver?

Axzona's ExternalMonitoring is fully managed and hosted service that requires no software to be installed on any of your servers.

Can I trial the service before I buy?

We're so confident that you'll see the benefits of Axzona's ExternalMonitoring service that we offer a 14 day free trial so that you can evaluate the service.

Where do the Axzona monitoring agents "live"?

A great deal of consideration goes into the placement of Axzona's monitoring agents. The 3 most crucial factors to take into consideration when deploying our monitoring agents are the Quality of the ISP, the Geographical location and the Data Centres used to house the equipment.

The Quality of a service provider can be measured in many ways, such as historical reliability, connection speeds, latency and peering arrangements.

The geographical location of the agents is also important - much of the UK's Internet infrastructure is located in and around London. Thereofore, London is an obvious place to host one of our monitoring agents. However, in all likelihood, not all of your website visitors are based in London. Which is why we also have monitoring agents located in the Northwest and Scotland.

Can I exclude the monitoring agents from my website visitor statistics?

We can provide you with the IP addresses of our monitoring agents - it's then a simple task to exclude these visits from your website analytics reports.

Will the Axzona monitoring agents slow down my website?

No, our monitoring agents will only visit your site as often as you ask us to do (typically once every 5 minutes) and they only ask your servers to do the same work as a "real" website visitor.