The Monitoring tests are found in the MONITORING TAB in the MCS main menu, as shown on the right.

To add a new DNS TEST click the ADD TASK LINK.

The DNS Monitor test allows you to measure the availability and response times of a DNS server by performing a lookup.

DNS SERVER: The user can add up to 3 DNS servers during this process, though only one is required.

DOMAIN/IP LOOKUP: Choose the IP address or domain name to lookup.

CHECK DNS: To make sure the DNS server is listening before performing a lookup, check this option.

TESTING PARAMS:

Set the interval between tests and test timout here. This simply dictates how often to perfrom a DNS lookup and how long to wait for a response.

Round Trip Time tests are used monitor the distance between MCS and the DNS server. If a specific port is required, define it here.

CONSOLIDATE: As it's possible to perform a lookup every few seconds it's usually necessary to consolidate the data for the database. This means an average of all results over a certain time frame are taken and added to the database as one entry.

This section is only used if the user wishes to alter the default thresholds.

The default settings are shown in brackets for each parameter.

This will not affect the global thresholds for other tests, they will be unique values for this test.

Click ADD DNS TASK to save changes.