> > Network Logger

> > User Manual

> > Network Logger provides an easy way to monitor the performance of your internet connection and web sites. You can open as many URL Monitors as you like. Choose "New" from the "File" menu to open another URL Monitor. Here's a view showing four URL monitors

> > The more URL Monitors you have, the better a picture you have of the performance of your internet connection. Here's a close up view of a single URL Monitor:

> > To get started, enter a URL to monitor, such as a web site you are responsible for. If you don't know what URL to use, search for "download test files" on your favorite search engine and pick a test file on a performance server near you that takes about 5 seconds to download, or see if your internet service provider has some speed test files on a network backbone near you. If you are downloading large files, make sure URL requests go out fairly infrequently to avoid generating too much network traffic.

> > Then set how often you want a request sent for the URL and the total duration of the testing period. Keep in mind good net etiquette while choosing these values: it's not polite to send large numbers of requests to a server that's not yours or cause a lot of data to flow over networks without a good reason. Failure to observe good net etiquette may have real world consequences such as a web site banning your IP address or your provider shutting down your internet account. Malicious use of network resources may have legal consequences in some areas. Also check with your web hosts and service providers to make sure you won't incur monetary charges. This tool is powerful, use it carefully as you would with any network utility. This program has a 30 second minimum delay between primary URL tests as a safety mechanism. The more time between tests and the smaller the file downloaded, the lesser the impact on traffic.

> > If the URL you are monitoring doesn't respond, Network Logger tries a second URL to see if your internet connection is down or if the web site actually went down before creating a new entry in the corresponding outage log.

> > Enter the secondary URL and specify how often you want to retest URLs during a web site failure. If you aren't sure what URL to use for testing network status, we suggest using a URL on your internet service provider's web site. Don't use a secondary URL that is hosted on the same physical site or shares a domain with your primary test URL or your network status test may be invalid. When setting testing and retry intervals, make sure your intervals are longer than it takes to download the test file and are longer than the request timeouts.

> > The Primary and Secondary URL Timeout popup menus let you set the timeout periods of the URL requests.

> > Once your settings are correct click on the "Request Primary URL" ON/OFF switch in the upper left of the window. The first URL request will go out immediately, after the second request, graphing will begin. When a response comes back, its statistics are logged in the URL Activity Log:

> > When a URL responds, time, size and speed statistics are entered in the URL Monitor activity log. This log clears itself when it gets too full, but when you save a session, all samples are saved. Every session starts out with three quick requests 10 seconds apart to establish a baseline and then the URL request schedule is followed thereafter.

> > If you check "Display Header" then the header information that comes with every HTTP response will be displayed in the activity log.

> > To make sure the data being measured is coming all the way from the web server and not from a cache on a router somewhere along the way a random null parameter is added to the end of the URL when a request is made. You can see this random parameter on the URL in the activity log when "Display HTTP Header" is checked, otherwise it is suppressed to make the URL easier to read, but still goes out on each request regardless to ensure that each request is unique.

> > URL requests can be charted by response time or by data transmission speed from the server. Speed can be shown in kilobits per second or megabits per second and both speed and time can be plotted on linear and log scales. The graph below shows speed in megabits per second. The blue lines show the speed of Primary URL request data, red lines show a URL request failure, the green lines show the data speed of requests sent to the secondary URL to verify that the network was up during the web site failure, which means that this graph shows a web site outage while the local network continued to operate normally.

> > Slider controls around the edges control scaling and viewing area of the graph. You can choose the graph type from the "Graph Type" popup menu.

> > If bars on the graph appear in yellow, this means that too little data is being downloaded to measure accurately. To correct this situation, use a URL that takes at least 5 seconds to download.

> > Keep in mind that data speed is determined by the slowest link in the chain of network devices between you and any given URL. The slowest link could be your network connection, or a slow web server, or a slow router in between. So, if you want to graph your network speed you need 1 or more URLs of speed test files hosted on a high performance server on a network backbone near you. In that case the slowest link in the chain is your internet connection and the speed represents your connection speed.

> > If you see speeds for a URL that are slower than your connection, that is usually because the web server is sending data more slowly than your connection can receive it. In that case the speed represents the website transmission speed. Try experimenting with a few URLs.

> > When the primary URL fails to respond three times in a row, and the secondary URL confirms that the network is up, the primary URL is declared offline and an entry is added to the URL Monitor Outage Log. When the web site comes back online the URL and the outage duration are also recorded in the log. You can copy and paste the log for communications with networking professionals or your service providers.

> > The Internet Connection Status window provides a log of network outages reported by all active URL Monitors. OSX network status notifications will cause one active URL monitor to send out a request in 5 seconds to check status. There must be at lease one active URL monitor window to log network status. Combining all these sources provides a more accurate network state display than other methods. When two different URLs fail to respond, the network is declared to be down. A server response to any URL request changes the network status to online even before the request is complete for the quickest possible update.

> > Like the URL Monitor log, you can choose "Export Network Outage Log..." from the File menu or copy and paste from the Internet Connection Status log for easy communication of the results. If you would like to hear verbal announcements in english when the network state changes, go to the "Options" menu and choose "Speak Network Status"

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