HTTP Monitoring with PRTG

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It is the foundational communication protocol used on the World Wide Web to transfer data between a client (such as a web browser) and a server. HTTP enables the fetching of resources, such as HTML documents, images, videos, and other files, from a server to display on a user's device.

How it works

• Client request: A client sends an HTTP request to the server, typically by entering a URL in a browser or clicking a link.
• Server response: The server processes the request and sends back an HTTP response containing the requested resource or an error message.

HTTP methods

Each HTTP transaction consists of:

• Request: Includes methods like GET, (fetch data), POST (send data), PUT (update data), or DELETE (delete data).
• Response: Contains a status code (for example, 200 OK, 404 Not Found), headers, and the requested response body content.

The term HTTP Monitor can have various meanings. You can use it for a software that can monitor and analyze the performance and behavior of HTTP connections, like those between web servers and clients (web browsers) that communicate through the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It can also be applied to tools that are used to monitor the parameters of an HTTP server, for example, uptime, system load, or available resources, on an Apache HTTP Server instance.

In both of these contexts, HTTP monitoring tools can be used to assess server availability and content delivery performance, ensuring that the users who visit your websites have the best experience possible. However, the term can also be loosely applied to tools that use HTTP to monitor something else. For example, a tool that uses HTTP to fetch content from a server and acts on that information.

In the end, it doesn't matter how you define HTTP monitoring: PRTG has a sensor for every HTTP monitoring task.

There are different reasons why it is a good thing to invest in an HTTP monitoring software, for example:

• Better availability: an automated monitoring tool can quickly alert your staff about server outages or other issues, which gives them crucial time to remediate the problem before your customers notice.
• More security: HTTP monitoring can detect repeated, suspicious, or unusual requests that may be symptoms of an attempt of a data breach or of unauthorized access.
• Performance optimization: an HTTP monitor can help you detect issues such as slow response and load times, identify the cause, and develop and validate a solution.
• Capacity planning: constant monitoring enables you to set up a baseline of the performance of your servers and content, and predict future capacity needs as your network grows.
• User experience: by monitoring server response codes, you can detect and address issues that could impact user satisfaction, such as unavailable content or broken links.

There are 5 main features you need to look out for when you choose an HTTP monitoring tool. With PRTG, you get all of them:

• The capability to monitor many aspects of your HTTP infrastructure in one tool
• A centralized display of information from many sensors for better observability
• Customizable alerts and automated notifications when alerts are triggered
• Native and automated reporting features that can also be easily customized
• A free trial period so you can test how the tool works with your infrastructure

In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive. On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.