Always online: what the edge does when something fails

Your site runs through Netslim Edge^TM. This protects it against two kinds of failures, both automatically.

Your web server goes down

The edge keeps a copy of every regular page (the emergency copy). If your web server does not respond or returns a server error, every visitor gets the last good version of the page. This includes visitors who have something in their cart or are logged in. They temporarily see the logged-out page. Only checkout, account and admin wait for your web server, because you can't serve those from a copy.

The emergency copy is made in advance. Every night the edge goes through your entire sitemap (up to 5,000 pages) and refreshes anything older than a week. This way the copy is already there before a failure, not only once a visitor has come by. In your portal under Security › Always online you can see how many pages are ready.

An edge server goes down

Netslim checks every edge server every minute. If one fails to respond three times in a row, we remove it from your domain's DNS and your domain points only to the working edge servers. If no edge server is reachable, your domain temporarily points directly to your own web server. Your site stays online, just without the edge features. As soon as the edge responds again for three minutes, everything switches back automatically.

This works for domains whose DNS is hosted at Netslim. A switch takes effect everywhere within about 15 minutes (that is how long other networks may remember a DNS answer). Records that you have pointed elsewhere yourself, we do not touch.

What you can do yourself

• Host your domain at Netslim, and the DNS switch works for you too.
• If you want your site to keep working fully (including checkout and account) during a longer web server outage, get a backup web server.