With the free SIRSTEVEHQ CDN, you can get an understanding about the traffic and requests accessing your sites.
Detailed data sets are collated and presented in charts for each of your sites at SIRSTEVEHQ, giving you insights about your site’s performance.
Accessing site Statistics
You can access the statistics for each site you host from the package overview page with your SIRSTEVEHQ CP account.
- Login to your SIRSTEVEHQ CP
- Select the package you wish to view the statistics for by selecting Manage
- Select Statistics
You’ll be presented with the CDN Statistics overview with the option to switch to the Traffic Distribution view.
Total Bandwidth - This refers to the amount of data (in bytes) sent through the SIRSTEVEHQ CDN to the client. This is split between data that’s been served from the origin server (uncached bandwidth) and served from the CDN nodes (cached bandwidth).
Total Hits - This refers to the number of files and sessions that have been transferred using the CDN network, it’s important to note that this isn't the same as ‘unique visitors’.
You can filter the statistics by a time period using the toggles at the top-right of each section.
Traffic Distribution
The statistics also show geographic overview of incoming requests to your side. This can also be toggled between Last Hour, Last Day and Last Week.
You can hover over a country to see figures for that location.
Understanding the Statistics
The underlying datasets that SIRSTEVEHQ captures and processes share the following characteristics:
- All metrics reflect HTTP traffic captured through SIRSTEVEHQ CDN network infrastructure
- SIRSTEVEHQ does not process HTTP traffic for unproxied web hosts
- In determining the originating country, SIRSTEVEHQ uses the IP address associated with each request
Understanding Apparent Data Discrepancies
As well as the characteristics described above, it’s possible that your SIRSTEVEHQ metrics will not fully align with data for the same site reported by other sources such as Google Analytics and other solutions.
Once SIRSTEVEHQ identifies a unique hostname for a request, we match such hostname with all registered server aliases for that hostname/domain. Therefore, the number of requests SIRSTEVEHQ show may be higher than the figures other analytics services report.
For example, Google Analytics and other web-based analytics programs use JavaScript on the web browser to track visitors. As a result, Google Analytics doesn’t record threats, bots, and automated crawlers because those requests typically do not trigger JavaScript.
Total Bandwidth
- Total Bandwidth - Total amount of bandwidth (sum of bytes) served by SIRSTEVEHQ’s CDN network
- Cached Bandwidth - Amount of bandwidth for requests considered as “cached”, i.e., response is served from SIRSTEVEHQ CDN Cache
- Uncached Bandwidth - Amount of bandwidth for requests considered as “uncached”, i.e., response is served directly from backend server
Total Hits
- Total Hits - Total number of requests captured by SIRSTEVEHQ’s CDN network.
- Cached Hits - Number of requests considered as “cached”, i.e., response is served from SIRSTEVEHQ CDN Cache.
- Uncached Hits - Number or requests considered as “uncached”, i.e., response is served directly from the backend server.
SSL Hits vs Non-SSL Hits
This graph shows the number of requests that are encrypted via the HTTPS protocol as opposed to the unencrypted HTTP protocol. If requests to a site such as http://example.com are made, this would constitute an insecure request.
You’ll want to ensure that as much as possible requests to your sites are made over HTTPS. Most often, this can be achieved using a 301 redirect, WordPress plugin, or ensuring the WordPress site and home URL utilise HTTPS. You will also need an SSL certificate to cover the site. You can apply the free SSL from within the hosting package.
HTTP Successful Requests vs Error Requests
Successful Request - These requests are defined as being all HTTP requests in the range of 200-399, such as '200 OK' requests or 301 Redirects.
Error Requests - These are defined as being HTTP requests ≥ 400, such as 404 Not Found requests or 503 Internal Server Errors.
It’s important that the amount of successful requests is maximised. If you’re seeing a higher rate of error requests, you should consider checking the access and error logs for any data about requests.
The SIRSTEVEHQ CDN comes free with all Cloud hosting, Wordpress hosting, and Managed Cloud Servers at SIRSTEVEHQ.
