WebSocket Monitoring

We’re happy to announce a new check type that can monitor the uptime and optionally the response of your WebSocket services, including Socket.io.

WebSocket checks can monitor the availability of RFC-6455 and Socket.io (0.9.X) compatible WebSocket services. We use WebSockets here at NodePing to communicate between various servers. WebSockets are also commonly used as a low-overhead communication between the browser and web servers. One the greatest features of WebSockets is their ability to send information from the server to the browser without the browser asking for each piece individually, or having to handle each piece of data as a separate connection as popular polling methods must do. WebSockets are increasingly common for web applications and other cloud based services, but until now there hasn’t been a good way to monitor the availability of your WebSocket based services.

WebSocket URIs look a bit different from other protocols as they start with either “ws” or “wss”. “wss” is used for SSL connections. Socket.io requires some session information from an HTTP handshake before the WebSocket can connect so they start with “http” or “https”.

WebSocket checks are available to all NodePing accounts. Full documentation can be found here. If you’re not a NodePing customer yet, please sign up for our 15-day free trial.

We’d love to hear what kind of checks you need for your infrastructure. Send us your requests or leave a comment below.