Stream Alerts currently offers two types of stream monitoring with more coming in the future.

Content Availability monitoring periodically checks your stream or file to make sure that it is available to all users. The system attempts to make a connection to the URL that you provide, and if it is successful, then it immediately disconnects and waits for the test interval to pass before checking again.

Pros:

• Very inexpensive, especially when our competitors charge $500 per stream!
• Uses very little bandwidth so it saves you money.
• It can warn you if a server has run out of capacity but is still streaming properly.
• Informs you of how well your stream responds to connection attempts from users.
• Does not require any special connections to your servers.

Cons:

• It can’t tell you if there is a problem with your content even though the stream is available.
• It does not offer statistics such as buffer rates, bandwidth or drop-outs.

Content Payload monitoring, on the other hand, connects and plays through your entire stream to see if there are any problems with the content. For live streams, this means that it listens all the time. On-demand files will play through their entirety and can loop back to the beginning.

Pros:

• Can warn you of content problems such as silent audio or video that is frozen or gone to black, blue or green.
• Experiences exactly what your users experience.
• Some streams may test as available even though the encoder crashed. Flash streams often exhibit this problem. Payload monitoring can warn you if this happens.

Cons:

• Uses the same amount of bandwidth a user would require.
• Does not reflect what new users are experiencing, for example if a particular server is full, you won’t know that new users can’t connect. Thankfully our Payload services include Availability monitoring so you don’t have to worry.