Network Monitoring How-to

Setup Your Host

The first step is to ensure that we are able to monitor your site. The host that we monitor must be a represented by a static IP address, a non-round-robin DNS A record, or a CNAME hostname which resolves to a single A record. We cannot monitor hosts within a DNS A record round robin at this time.

Network Monitoring Servers

Next, be sure that the services on your host are accessible from our monitoring agents. To do this, you must allow the IP addresses of the agents listed below to access the services you plan to monitor on your host.

Agent Name Current Location IP Address
Agent A Chicago, IL 204.13.249.133
Agent B Palo Alto, CA 208.78.69.133

Setup Network Monitoring

Before you can use the Network Monitoring service, you will to create an account, or, if you already have an account, login to that account.

To begin the process, click on "Add Host". On the Add Network Monitoring page, you will need to enter the IP address or hostname of the host you wish to monitor. You will also need to enter an e-mail address to receive all notifications about this host. You can also select the type of notification you wish to receive. Once you have entered this information, click on the Next button to add the service to your cart. Once added to your cart, you only need to checkout before the service becomes active.

After billing is completed, the host you are monitoring has been added, and you now need to define the services you wish to monitor on that host. Click on the Add Monitoring Services link. In this screen, select the type of service you wish to monitor from the drop down provided.

The Alternate Port field is optional, and is used to override the standard port specification for the service being used. For example, if you wish to monitor a HTTP server running on port 88, enter 88 in this field. If left blank, the monitor will use the standard port for the service in question.

The Expected Data field is optional as well. If text is entered into this field, we will check that your service returned this text to our monitoring agent upon connection. For example, if you wish to monitor the HTTP server on www.dyndns.com, and ensure that the home page always contains the text "DynDNS", enter that text into this field. If left blank, the monitor will ensure that the correct connection response code is issued at time of connection.

The Check Interval field is required. This is the period of time between attempts to check your service. Use the drop down to select the appropriate interval.

The Contact field is optional. This field is used to define a secondary e-mail address that will be notified of problems with this service, in addition to the host contact.

Click on Add New Monitor.

Once your service has been added, you can use the View link at the top of the page to see the status of the service and the host.