The goal of this thesis is to develop and test tools that can be used
to monitor and measure the availability of Internet services, such as
HTTP and SMTP services. The challenge will lie in creating a range of
tools that can accommodate a range of access to servers (from access
only to the service itself for a commercial service, through non-root
to root access to the server machines) and in ensuring accuracy of the
measurements while limiting the load incurred by the measurement
process. Existing approaches include repeatedly "ping"ing a server,
analysing "last" logs and and "uptime" on Unix boxes, etc. The
resulting measurements will indicate the availability of Internet
services and guide research into enhancing the dependability of
Internet services.
