Webmetrics Performance Blog

Performance monitoring serves two critical purposes: to check a web site’s availability and to validate the speed at which pages from the web site download. Site availability is very easy to define; it’s either up or it’s down. There isn’t too much in between. Page download speeds can be a bit trickier to define because there are many different ways to delineate a web page’s load time. This is generally due to the nature of performance monitoring, in which an automated browser makes a request...READ MORE

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actual load time / perceived load time / load time / performance monitoring /

Every organization values innovation, but can they commit to it?Even with commitment, can you make it work?If you're looking for a way to turbocharge development and fan the flames of innovation at your  company, here's something we tried at Neustar Webmetrics that was really successful.But first, a little bit about the Webmetrics team.Performance DNAWebmetrics products are tightly focused on helping our customers achieve the best performance possible. We know that web pages can always l...READ MORE

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innovation / NeuDev / engineering / Daniel Pink / motivation / hack days /

I recently gave a webinar on load testing best practices  to ensure holiday success. While the title is specifically geared towards the holiday shopping season, all of the techniques are applicable and relevant to everyday performance and operations activities. In all of our load testing with hundreds of different customers over the years, I've seen my share of high-performing and low-performing websites. The high-performing sites all have generally followed the same practices and metho...READ MORE

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load testing best practices / benchmarks / benchmarking / web performance profiling / disaster recovery / DR / network throughput / load testing / web performance / webinar /

Cloud computing is here, and it’s changing everything: infinitely scalable on-demand hardware, no up-front costs, pay-as-you-go pricing, and click-and-drag instead of rack-and-stack. It’s a paradigm shift in how IT functions, but it is no silver bullet. There are limits to the abstracted infrastructure, and undelivered promises around automatically scalable hardware. To analyze the promise and the reality of cloud, Alistair Croll spent five months doing primary research across five of the mos...READ MORE

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saas / iaas / paas / cloud / performance /

For those of you interested in learning more about the Cloud and making the transition to Cloud-based services, we have a new informative on-demand webcast that might interest you: “How to Trust Cloud” . Here’s the synopsis: The idea of moving key parts of your business into the cloud is scary. You lose control, visibility, and a neck to wring when something goes wrong. What does it take to make the leap? More important than the ROI and the many other benefits is the ability to trust the clou...READ MORE

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Webmetrics Webinars / Webmetrics Webcasts / Cloud Performance / Cloud /

I’m happy to introduce Visual Application Monitoring. Visual Application Monitoring allows you to monitor the performance of a transaction in your rich media application. Do you have a Flash application that’s visible to customers and needs to provide them with the ultimate online experience? Whether you offer a community in which your customers are uploading and sharing files, enable your customers to build their dream product, or anything in between, it is imperative to know your rich media...READ MORE

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Visual Application Monitoring / Flash Monitoring / Silverlight Monitoring / Application Monitoring / Webmetrics /

Time and time again, studies indicate that faster websites produce greater revenue. All too often, the approach toward increasing the speed of a site is seen as only a "technical challenge" that requires new hardware, better search algorithms and so forth. Often overlooked is the importance of having an efficient and effective user experience .At Velocity 2010 Stoyan Stefanov, a performance engineer at Yahoo! and architect of YSlow 2.0 , gave a talk on the Psychology of Performance...READ MORE

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user experience / UX / Stoyan Stefanov / YSlow 2.0 / Psychology of Performance / The Psychology of Performance / usability / Google Analytics / Holden Robbins / Make the Most of Your Webmetrics Services / web performance / Velocity 2010 / Velocity / YSlow / webinar / Webmetrics /

If there is any question whether web performance and web operations is hot, you need only look at the attendance and interest in this year's O'Reilly Velocity conference . We're told that the total attendance topped 1,200 -- which is more than both previous years combined. In its third year, Velocity is quickly becoming a must for any web-based company. Below, I will attempt to summarize the general themes from this year's conference, and point out the most important trends/tools/news.This ye...READ MORE

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web operations / Velocity 2010 / Steve Souders / progressive enhancement / time-to-interact / Google Page Speed / YSlow / HTTP Watch / WebPageTest.org / dynaTrace Ajax Edition / Google Speed Tracer / Strangeloop / Chef / cloud / cloud computing / The Upside of Downtime / web performance / Velocity / Lenny Rachitsky /

Combining external monitoring data from Webmetrics with tools (such as Nagios) that monitor the health of your internal servers can be very powerful. This way, you can get a single view into application health from both inside and outside your firewall. Jason Paddock from Neustar’s Professional Services Team has put together a prototype of a simple yet effective data integration using Webmetrics and Nagios as an example. For a detailed walkthrough of a prototype integration between these two...READ MORE

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Nagios / external monitoring / external monitoring data / Webmetrics /

The Social Media Committee of the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC), the largest technology council in the nation, recently recognized Neustar with a “Best Use of Viral Videos” award at this week’s DC Digital Week! Two of our videos were singled out for commendation -- one from our Webmetrics service and one from our Ultra DNS service.The NVTC held its first annual Social Media Awards on Tuesday, June 15, 2010, with the goal of recognizing commercial and government organizations t...READ MORE

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Northern Virginia Technology Council / NVTC / DC Digital Week / Ultra DNS / Social Media Awards / Webmetrics /