How It Works

AlertMeFirst’s proprietary technology performs IPQs (Internet Protocol Queries) on each Internet device you have specified in your online account, at the frequency you have requested. As soon as a device is set-up, our monitoring computers immediately send the appropriate text string to the device, depending on what type of device it is.

In the case of a Web server, we send a standard HTTP request (i.e. a "GET" command). This is exactly what your browser does when you go to a Web site. We then wait for the page (txt, htm, html, asp, php, etc.) to be returned and measure how many milliseconds it took for the first packet to return (a page may be broken up in to several packets). If the first packet returns in an acceptable amount of time, as defined by you, we record it as a ‘good’ response. An alert can be triggered by any of the following IPQ responses:

• A “slow” response - if the response came back in an unacceptable amount of time
• A “no” response - if the server, or any device between the server and us is down
• An “unexpected” response - if a keyword was not found on a page

This response time will be affected by how busy the Internet is, how heavily your Web server is being used, and a variety of other factors. The AlertMeFirst monitoring computers are tied into Bell Global's OC192 Tier-One IP backbone. This means that the IPQs sent to your Internet devices will take a quick efficient path to your regional Internet connection.