Uptimes Project FAQ

The Noctum Design Uptimes Project

FAQ

The Uptimes Project is an attempt to collect data on system uptime from various operating system and hardware configurations. This data is then made public via nifty tables and graphs and statistics. It's not so much scientific as it is geeky, and some people think it's a lot of fun to have "uptime battles" with friends, although this is probably not a sport that will ever be televised or accepted by the general public.

What is "system uptime"?

System uptime is the amount of time a computer has been running since it was last rebooted.

What happened to the original Uptimes Project?

The original project (the corpse of which you can still find here) Was ended in July of 2001 due to a number of circumstances -- mostly morons complaining to the ISP of the owner of the uptimes server because they thought that the server's responses on port 80 every few minutes were "hack attempts" against their machines. Ever since it was shut down, the world has been devoid of a similar project, so our goal is to bring it back. The new Uptimes Project was written from scratch to be 100% compatible with the original protocol.

In addition to supporting the original uptimes.net protocol, we have also developed a new version of the protocol based on UDP instead of HTTP. This new protocol is now the preferred one, since UDP traffic puts far less load on the server than HTTP traffic. Not only is the new protocol more efficient, it's also easier to use, which means it's easier to develop clients.

How do I participate?

Create a user account here and log in. Then you can add hosts to your account, download a client for your OS, and begin filling the database with your wonderful uptimes.

Why does my host details page say my host is bogus?

If your host has been reporting very unlikely (or impossible) uptimes, your host will be marked bogus and excluded from all statistics. For example, if you claim to have an uptime of 1200 days on a Windows XP machine, we know that's impossible because Windows XP didn't exist 1200 days ago.

If your host has been marked bogus and you think it was a mistake, or you've decided to change your ways and start reporting truthful uptimes again, contact me and I'll fix you right up.

Is there a way to report my host's uptime from my website?

Yep! Just use a standard <img> tag, like this:

<img src="http://uptimes.noctumdesign.com/remote.php?hostid=[host id]&bgcolor=[background color]&color=[text color]">

Replace [host id] with your host's id number (this can be found on your host's details page). Replace [background color] with an HTML color value for the image background and replace [text color] with an HTML color value for the text color. For example:

<img src="http://uptimes.noctumdesign.com/remote.php?hostid=2&bgcolor=000000& color=ffffff">

That image tag will display an image with the uptime for the uptimes.noctumdesign.com server, and it'll look like this:

What are all these connections to my computer from port 80 of 63.105.27.131? Am I being hacked?

No, you are not being hacked. Remember, uptime clients send their uptime reports to the server every few minutes. The client communicates through an HTTP connection on port 80, so the server naturally responds to the client from port 80. If you do an nslookup on uptimes.noctumdesign.com, you'll find that it resolves to 63.105.27.131. This is not someone trying to hack you, it is merely the uptimes server sending friendly responses to your client. No need for concern.

Is there a way to retrieve user statistics via XML?

There sure is! XML user statistics can be retrieved using the following simple URL interface:

http://uptimes.noctumdesign.com/xml.php?op=hostdetails&hostid=[Host ID]

Or:

http://uptimes.noctumdesign.com/xml.php?op=hostdetails&authkey=[Auth Key]

Replace [Host ID] or [Auth Key] with the id or auth key for the host you want to look up, and you'll get back a well-formed XML file with tons of useful statistics about that host. You can then parse the stats to your heart's content and use them for your own evil plans. For example, the following URL will return the XML data for the uptimes.noctumdesign.com server:

http://uptimes.noctumdesign.com/xml.php?op=hostdetails&hostid=2

All the data that you get via the XML interface is raw and unparsed, straight from the database. Date/time fields are in UNIX time format, and uptimes are in minutes. Uptime report data is listed in descending order by time, so the most recent reports are listed first.

Does a high uptime mean an OS is stable?

Not necessarily. This is a common misconception. Uptime alone is merely a measure of how long a system has been continuously running, and does not always take into account how hard that system has been working during that time. Almost any OS, if it has nothing at all to do, will run for a very long time without having any trouble. But only a very good OS on solid hardware will achieve a high uptime while being put to thorough use. We try to compensate for this by allowing clients to report CPU usage and average idle time data, but not all clients support these features yet.

I'd like to help out with the project. How can I be of service?

If you'd like to write a client for an OS or platform that currently does not have one, we would love you forever and shower you with kisses. The uptimes protocol is very simple, and you can find an official specification right here. If you'd like to help out in some other way, such as writing statistics code for the website or other such things, please contact me. I'd be more than happy to have whatever help I can get with this, since I do have a full-time job and have to relegate my work on this project to my spare time (which is nearly nonexistant).

Modified and Maintained by Robert Babel