Http Probe

HTTP Probe uses GO httptrace module to provide telemetry to each event in a Http GET request lifecycle. To provide readings for DNS lookup, TCP Connect, TLS Handshake, Time-to-First-Byte, Time-to-Last-Byte and Total Duration.

Event Readings calculated includes

1. DNS LookUp Duration
2. TCP Connect Duration
3. TLS Handshake (if https)
4. Time to First Byte
5. Time to Last Byte
6. Total Duration

If verbosity is enabled, it provides

1. RemoteServerIP and Port
2. TLS Version in decimal code
3. CipherSuite in decimal code
   To obtain the coded version for CipherSuite, please refer to GO TLS library

Usage

Usage: httpProbe [options...] [URL]

  -v  enable verbosity to include more informations (RemoteServerIP, TLS Version, CipherSuite)
  -f  saving output to json file, the saved json file will be created and save as result.json
  -h  help menu
  URL using FQDN only including http or https, TLS requires host header and cannot use only IP Address without host header 

-f will save the output into a json file, result.json that can be used for other program for consumption. A good example of this is providing reports or the key/value can be used for making geo-routing decision.

Example

httpProbe https://www.maxng.net

DNS lookup Duration: 81.95539ms
TCP Connect Duration: 11.847007ms
TLS Duration: 268.160327ms
Time To First byte: 257.011358ms
DNS lookup Duration: 44.369347ms
TCP Connect Duration: 6.206105ms
TLS Duration: 9.340945ms
Time To First byte: 179.039125ms
Time to Last byte: 84.595µs
End-to-End Duration: 859.744586ms

httpProbe -v https://www.maxng.net
DNS lookup Duration: 1.117394ms
TCP Connect Duration: 8.868334ms
Remote ServerIP Connection Info: 104.18.16.160:443
TLS Duration: 228.535567ms
TLS Version: 772
TLS CiperSuite: 4865
Time To First byte: 51.151442ms
Time to Last byte: 87.406µs
End-to-End Duration: 290.573317ms

Note: The duration readings stored in json is in microsecond, 1 millisecond is 1000 microseconds

Latest Release

Rel 1.2

- fixed a bug where DNS Duration is not written to file when -f parameter is used

Caveats

1. Testing has not been done on using IP address instead of FQDN. For http request, IP address will work fine (no DNS lookup is performed), for https, httpprobe does not provide a Host Header or SNI, so TLS handshake will fail for most sites. For Https telemetry a FQDN is recommended.
2. Results have been compared with httpstat another great telemetry program written in GO, cURL and Firefox browser. Details can be found in the Wiki.

Download

Download Httpprobe binary from the Release Store. If you need a binary not in the supported operating system, please contact the author.