alex.moskalyuk

GIGRIB Uptime service from IPWalk seems to be pretty useful for many Webmasters out there. Modeled after SETI@Home and Distributed.net the service requires the user to download a client (Windows only), which will automatically check the uptime of other URLs entered into the system. It also means the client will be generating quite a few HTTP requests, although it won’t download the sites - it will only check for a valid header telling it that the document requested is available. The client can be configured to check the URL every minute. For each hour that the client stays alive and checks others’ sites, you earn 5 hours for your own sites.

The beauty of the distributed approach is that you can suddenly find out your sites are extremely slow (or unavailable) in New Zealand or Morocco. Some frequently asked questions are answered here.