isITon allows you to connect to a secure server just like any other device, so your security model is never compromised. isITon can retrieve the contents of a Web page that is protected by basic realm authentication with the username and password that you specify. Username and passwords can also be specified for ftp services.

network trace

If the monitored site is not available and tracing is enabled isITon conducts a traceroute and stores the results for later perusal and fault finding.

network gateway or sibling server monitoring

This service enables isITon to distinguish between problems local to a device, and connectivity problems of a larger scope such as an ISP or backbone outage or degradation. Example: The device being monitored is www.abc.co and the gateway to that device from the Internet is ip address 10.1.2.3. If no connection to www.abc.co can be made a check is done to see if 10.1.2.3 is alive. If the gateway is fine but the device is down then an error condition type 1 is created and the appropriate people are notified. If the gateway is also down an error condition type 6 occurs and the appropriate people are notifed.

If a server has gone down a check can be made to see whether a sibling server is still responding to a ping. This offers further diagnostic information to enable you to get your service up and running again ASAP.

file size checking

isITon records the file size each time a file is retrieved. The size can be compared against the size of the file as previously retrieved, thereby enabling isITon to notify you if the file size changed.

example:

specify URL http://www.abc.co/index.html
(file size of 500 bytes)

The next time isITon retrieves the file and finds that the file is not exactly 500 bytes isITon goes into error condition Type 7 and the appropriate recipients are notifed.

form monitoring

The parameters can be specified as either POST or GET. The data retrieved is then scanned for the existence or non-existence of a keyword or phrase. This can be used to monitor transaction engines or databases.

example:

For both GET and POST specify the URL in the URL line. e.g. http://www.abc.co/cgi-bin/scripto

and then specify each parameter separated by the ampersand (&) character in the parameter box as:

status=query&type=1

keyword or phrase

Any web page or data file retrieved by isITon can be scanned for the existance of a keyword or phrase. isITon can then be configured to notify any of the recipients when the keyword is not found.

example:

If the keyword "XYZ Company" is searched for and not found an error type 4 condition will be triggered and the appropriate notifications will be sent. The keyword in this instance may come from a back-end database or host.