uptimechecking

Uptime checking, also known as uptime monitoring, refers to the practice of regularly verifying that a digital service, such as a website, API, or network resource, is reachable and performing as expected. It is a core component of IT operations, reliability engineering, and service-level management, and is used to detect outages and performance degradations.

Most uptime checks are automated and run from one or more monitoring endpoints at predefined intervals. Checks are usually active (synthetic) probes that request a target URL or endpoint, verify that the response is a valid HTTP status, and measure latency and content validity. Some monitoring also relies on passive data from real user traffic (real user monitoring) to assess uptime and performance from end users’ perspectives.

Key metrics include availability (uptime percentage), latency, error rate, and outage duration. Alerts are triggered when metrics breach thresholds or when checks fail, enabling on-call personnel to investigate. Data is typically aggregated into dashboards, with incident tickets generated when service levels are missed.

Uptime checking is used for websites, APIs, cloud services, and network devices, and supports service-level objectives, incident response, capacity planning, and reliability improvements. It complements other monitoring approaches by offering proactive, objective verification of service reachability independent of internal telemetry.

Challenges include false positives, insufficient geographic coverage, and the trade-off between check frequency and resource overhead. Security and privacy concerns may arise when probes access private networks. Effective uptime checking often combines synthetic monitoring with other data sources for a complete view of service health.