Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions
What does the suricat.eu site offer?
The suricat.org site is a community of users who want to monitor their Internet services. This monitoring can be free or paid. To use the site for free, you simply need to install a Suricat agent responsible for monitoring member sites from your own computer.
You can also choose not to install an agent on your computer. To use the suricat network, you will need to purchase monitoring tokens that will be consumed when monitoring your website.
The suricat network will notify you of any malfunction on your site (response time too long, HTTP error response, or response different from the one expected) by sending an email, an SMS, or via an RSS feed.
What are the steps to monitor my website?
To monitor your website, you need to
How do I get help?
To get help, you have several options available to you:- consult the FAQ
- send a message to support@suricat.fr
- call (33)-(0)1-85-09-38-97. If there is no answer, please use an alternative means of contact.
What does the Suricat site offer?
The suricat.eu site is a website monitoring tool (monitoring of the availability of your servers, monitoring of their response and their compliance). This monitoring is carried out through a technical platform (on servers that we own ourselves) and through the computers of the site's participants. A suricat is installed on each of these computers. It communicates securely with our web platform, which collects the monitoring results.When a malfunction is detected by our platform, an alert can be issued by email, SMS, or RSS feed.
Questions about SURICAT agents
How do I download a suricat?
To download a Suricat, you need to be logged in to the site. This way, we give an identity to the suricat you download: the monitoring points (tokens) that your suricat will have earned will be credited to you. After logging in via the "Your Account" tab, click on the "Home" tab, then on the "Download" link.
We will then ask you to choose an operating system (that of the machine on which you want to install the suricat), the name of the proxy server and the port number allowing you to browse the Internet (this information is provided by your Internet service provider - most of the time, these settings can be left blank), and the frequency at which you wish to carry out monitoring from your computer (this setting allows you to use more or less bandwidth for the Suricat. The higher the frequency - close to one minute -, the more requests the suricat will make on the web. The lower the frequency - close to 30 minutes -, the fewer requests the suricat will make and the less bandwidth it will use) before starting the download. You will get a zip file that you can extract on your computer. This zip file contains two or three files:
You can now install the suricat wherever you like and launch it by double-clicking on the Suricat agent. We recommend launching the Suricat agent every time the computer starts. To launch it automatically on Windows, click here. On Linux, automatic launch of Suricat is done as indicated here.
Which operating systems are compatible with Suricat?
Suricat agents are compatible with most versions of Windows, as well as most versions of Linux. We have tested them on Windows XP and Windows Vista (32-bit), as well as on Debian and Ubuntu.
We invite you to let us know if you manage to use one of the Suricat versions on your preferred operating system. We will note it here.
How do I install a suricat on Windows?
To install a suricat on Windows, you need to download a Suricat after providing some information.
The downloaded zip file contains 3 files:
To install your suricat, unzip the zip file to a location of your choice. Then double-click on the install.bat file. This will install your suricat.
How do I install a suricat on Linux?
To install a suricat on Linux, you need to download a Suricat after providing some information.
The downloaded zip file contains 2 files:
To launch your suricat, on the command line, type: ./suricat
The suricat will start. To start it automatically, we suggest using a script that will enable it to launch.
How do I launch the suricat at Windows startup?
To install a suricat on Windows, you need to download a Suricat after providing some information.
The downloaded zip file contains 3 files:
To install your suricat, unzip the zip file to a location of your choice. Then double-click on the install.bat file. This will install your suricat.
How do I launch the suricat at Linux startup?
To install a suricat on Linux, you need to download a Suricat after providing some information.
The downloaded zip file contains 2 files:
To launch your suricat, on the command line, type: ./suricat
The suricat will start. To start it automatically, we suggest using a script that will enable it to launch.
Questions about monitor configuration
What can be monitored?
Using Suricat agents, you can monitor any service accessible on the Internet that uses the http, ftp, and https protocols.
Can I monitor my competitors' websites?
No, because we are certain that you would not accept one of your competitors monitoring your website and being informed of a possible malfunction before you are. Every site monitored by Suricat agents must display a proof-of-ownership seal in the form of an html tag:
<meta name="suricat_sign" content="50a67631fe5780a5d7f21c530fde35be"/>
This seal can only be placed on the page by the page's webmaster. Therefore, only the site owner is able to place this proof-of-ownership seal.
Where should I place the proof-of-ownership seal?
The proof-of-ownership seal should be placed between the <head> and </head> tags of your html page.
This seal takes the form of an html tag:
<meta name="suricat_sign" content="ac01e77fffcd85cd1798ee5f8e69c2bf"/>
N.B.: the content variable changes for each monitored URL
If you have difficulty placing this seal on your web page, you can send us an email at tech@suricat.eu
What is the proof-of-ownership seal?
The proof-of-ownership seal is a tag, invisible to the end user. We check for the presence of this tag in your html page before activating monitoring of it.
Questions about the viewing console
What is a START, END, NEW, or CHANGED status?
The statuses START, END, NEW, and CHANGED are the statuses reported by the suricats when they
What unit is used to report page size?
The unit of page size is the byte. This corresponds to the size of the page retrieved by the suricat at the time of monitoring.
What is the HTTP status?
The HTTP status is a status returned by servers in response to a request. A distinction is made between normal statuses (below 400) and error statuses. You can find the meaning of these statuses on the Wikipedia page about HTTP statuses
What is the difference between status and HTTP status?
The HTTP status is the status returned by servers in response to an HTTP request. The START, END, NEW, and CHANGED status corresponds to the state of the monitor
What is the confidence rate?
The confidence rate is the confidence we assign to a monitoring data point. An agent may fail to connect to a site without this meaning that the site is inaccessible. We have therefore assigned a score (the confidence rate) to every alert reported by a suricat agent.
What is a monitoring gap?
A monitoring gap corresponds to the fact that no suricat was available to monitor your site. Even though several suricats are supposed to monitor your site at all times, certain special circumstances can lead to this situation (computers of suricat users being turned off at almost the same time, monitoring platform being unreachable)
Why does the suricat network detect response times shorter than those seen by my users?
When your users browse, the browsers they use retrieve the page and display it. However, this display can take time: the browser has to calculate the layout of the elements on the page. This display is generally the cause of the additional time seen by your users. Another cause can be the use of browser-side scripts, which sometimes significantly slows down the display of a page.
Questions about reports
if you define a monitor ++
How long are reports retained?
Reports are available on a rolling 12-month basis. Beyond that, they are no longer available.
What is the average response time?
The average response time is the average response time over the month in question. It is calculated by taking all the measurements shown; reports are kept on a rolling 12-month basis. Beyond that, they are no longer available.
What is the average response time?
The average response time is the average response time over the month in question. It is calculated by taking all the measurements shown; reports are kept on a rolling 12-month basis. Beyond that, they are no longer available.
What is the response time for OK measurements?
This response time corresponds to the time needed to return a response that matches what is expected.
What is the response time for NOK measurements?
This response time corresponds to the time needed to return a non-compliant response. This average response time is measured for all non-compliant responses.
What is the percentage of responses in under n seconds?
You have defined a maximum response time (generally less than 30 seconds). The suricats have determined which responses were returned beyond this maximum time. The site then calculates the percentage of responses with non-compliant times.
What is the duration in error (HTTP status > 400)?
When a site returns a response, it also returns a code. When the code is greater than 400, a connection error or server error has occurred. The duration in error is recorded.
For more information, click on the list of HTTP codes
What is the percentage of time without HTML error?
When a site returns a response, it also returns a code. When the code is greater than 400, a connection error or server error has occurred. The duration without error is recorded.
What is the duration of non-compliance (phrase not found)?
What is the percentage of time a compliant response was delivered?
This is the percentage of time during which the server was able to return a compliant response.
Why are my reports modified when I modify my monitors? Can I avoid this?
When you redefine your monitors, the alerts reported by the suricats are no longer valid. The calculations performed on the reports page are then no longer valid. When you request that reports be recalculated, they are then inaccurate. To avoid this, save your reports in PDF format as they become available. This way you will keep up-to-date reports.
Sales/billing questions
Are your prices inclusive or exclusive of tax?
Our prices are exempt from VAT in accordance with Article 293B of the French General Tax Code (CGI).
As a result, businesses cannot reclaim VAT on the services offered. Individuals, associations, and small companies pay the same price as businesses.
Why do you use Stripe as a payment intermediary?
Suricat chose Stripe as its trusted payment intermediary because Stripe enables payment via a large number of payment methods worldwide. Stripe is recognized as a reliable intermediary by the largest market regulatory authorities (GIE CB, Visa, Mastercard, etc.)
For Publications Online, using Stripe is a mark of trust and ensures processing fees among the lowest on the market.
I just purchased products. How long does it take to get access to them on the interface?
As soon as your purchase is validated by Stripe, Stripe sends us the information allowing us to validate your purchases on the platform.
A delay of a few minutes may possibly delay the sending of the message to our platform. Beyond a few hours, please contact us at the email address: s u p p o r t@ s u r i c a t .f r.