FAQs
- How can I tell that my site traffic is routing through SiteSpect?
- Can we access our original page that our origin is serving, even when 100% of our site traffic is routing through SiteSpect?
- What is the SSLB cookie?
- How do I know if I’m assigned to a SiteSpect Campaign?
- What is the /_ssobj path that we see?
- Why does SiteSpect display this timeout message: “We're sorry, the link that you clicked on could not be served. We are experiencing a temporary delay due to high volume. Please click RELOAD and try again. We apologize for the inconvenience.”?
- What are 50x responses when it comes to SiteSpect?
- How can I Identify site visitor IP address?
- How do we pull access logs from SiteSpect?
- What is Bypass mode?
- Under what circumstances is Bypass mode automatically triggered?
- How can I tell if my site is bypassed?
- How can I use Log Visualizations to troubleshoot any traffic issues?
- Sample Troubleshooting Procedures
How can I tell that my site traffic is routing through SiteSpect?
The presence of RTSS header indicates that traffic is being routed through SiteSpect.
To go to the unmodified page that the origin is serving, without routing traffic through SiteSpect, you can modify your local host file to force traffic for a host name to go to a certain IP address.
For example, if the origin IP is 63.2.3.4, and the hostname is www.example.com, add the following entry into your host file:
What is the SSLB cookie?
If a user is routed through SiteSpect and assigned to a Campaign, SiteSpect sets their SSLB cookie to 1. The user keeps this Cookie Value until no longer assigned to a Campaign. If a user is not assigned to a Campaign, SiteSpect sets their SSLB cookie to 0.
How do I know if I’m assigned to a SiteSpect Campaign?
SSSC cookie is a Status Signaling Cookie, a session-only cookie, used to send the user's Campaign assignment information to the backend web server. It contains the campaign and variation group pairs of IDs for each campaign the user is assigned to.
What is the /_ssobj path that we see?
/__ssobj is the SiteSpect directory where objects are stored on SiteSpect systems.
Why does SiteSpect display this timeout message: “We're sorry, the link that you clicked on could not be served. We are experiencing a temporary delay due to high volume. Please click RELOAD and try again. We apologize for the inconvenience.”?
SiteSpect is designed to proactively close connections and display a message to alert users whenever either of the following two conditions occur:
- SiteSpect establishes an HTTP connection with your origin and the origin does not respond with any data within a predefined period (the default is 60 seconds).
- SiteSpect is not able to establish a TCP connection with the origin.
This is not a SiteSpect error state.
The timeout message is configurable. Contact the SiteSpect Help Desk at helpdesk@sitespect.com to customize this timeout message.
What are 50x responses when it comes to SiteSpect?
50x responses are error states in which visitor traffic does not proxy correctly. The server is aware that it has encountered an error or is otherwise incapable of performing the request.
There are three classes of 5xx errors observed through SiteSpect.
- SiteSpect was unable to reach the origin.
- SiteSpect was able to reach the origin but the origin (or a device in between) severed the connection.
- SiteSpect reached the origin and timed out the connection due to inactivity.
Processing time on Log Visualization tool can easily discern which of these three errors occurred.
How can I Identify site visitor IP address?
Traffic into your infrastructure that has already passed through SiteSpect will have a IP address of a SiteSpect Engine. From your your infrastructure systems or web app, this IP will need access to the web servers that it is proxying to.
SiteSpect maintains the end-user’s IP address in the X-Forwarded-For request header, which is a common method used by HTTP proxies. That header may present either as a single IP address or a comma delimited list of IP addresses. Your systems should inspect and use the left most value when a list of values is presented or the single value when only one is present.
SiteSpect may also be configured to send a custom request header with the end-user’s IP address.
How do we pull access logs from SiteSpect?
You can pull the access logs using the SiteSpect interface if you are a Campaign Administrator. To do so, select Site, Monitoring, Log Files.
You can also download logs using the Admin API. Go to https://developers.sitespect.com for more information.
What is Bypass mode?
Bypass mode is a safety feature built into SiteSpect. It allows you to remove SiteSpect from your production flow in a way that does not affect your visitor’s ability to navigate your site. To initiate Bypass mode, you or a SiteSpect team member can put the site into Bypass.
SiteSpect may invoke Bypass mode automatically if there is a routing issue between the SiteSpect Cloud and your origin or if your origin begins to maintain open connections abnormally with SiteSpect.
Under what circumstances is Bypass mode automatically triggered?
The SiteSpect Cloud is designed to automatically bypass your site under the following conditions:
Connection Issue: If the healthcheck or performance probes proxied through SiteSpect are unable to reach your origin due to any connection or network issue.
Healthcheck or Performance Files are Removed: If the healthcheck or performance objects are removed from your origin.
Healthcheck or Performance Files Takes Too Long to Respond: If the healthcheck or performance objects take longer than ten seconds.
Too Many Connections: If three or more SiteSpect engines across SiteSpect datacenters open connections more than a set threshold, SiteSpect interprets that as a slow responding origin and automatically puts your site into Bypass mode. If the number of open connections for a given SiteSpect engine exceeds a higher set threshold, that engine will start to actively refuse connections and respond with a 503 - Service Unavailable error, which means that the server is currently unavailable (because it is overloaded or down for maintenance). Generally, this is a temporary state.
SiteSpect Cloud is overloaded: If the SiteSpect Cloud becomes overloaded (for example, due to a DDoS attack), SiteSpect automatically initiates Bypass mode.
How can I tell if my site is in Bypass?
To see if your site is in Bypass mode, look in the upper right corner of the page. SiteSpect displays a Bypass indicator if your site is in Bypass.
How can I use Log Visualizations to troubleshoot any traffic issues?
If your site encounters traffic issues, you can use SiteSpect's Site Performance tool to quickly identify if the issue originates with SiteSpect or your origin. Here are some examples:
- If there is a spike in response time:
- Check the origin response time trend graph.
- Are all the objects (URLs) similar or of the same class? If so check the origin application.
- Are the response times close to the Back-End Network Communication Timeout setting? If so, SiteSpect is proactively closing the connection due to the origin application not responding to the proxy request. This is an application layer, not TCP layer issue, on the origin.
- Are only certain SiteSpect datacenters reporting the slower response times? If so, see if you have inadvertently deployed rate limiting against traffic from SiteSpect.
- If there is a spike in network layer error rates (50x errors):
- See if your firewall is blocking traffic from SiteSpect.
- Have there been any changes to your network or application?
- Did SiteSpect automatically put your site into Bypass mode due to a high number of origin connections:
- Use the Site Performance tool to graph your origin response time. You will see a spike. That spike triggered the Bypass event. Using the date/timestamp provided in the graph, investigate why your origin systems started to become slower.
Sample Troubleshooting Procedures
Error Description: Traffic Routing Error. Traffic intended for SiteSpect is not correctly routed to the SiteSpect Cloud.
Impact: Inconsistent visitor experience and invalid test results. SiteSpect is in Bypass mode.
Possible Causes: Your DNS record is no longer using SiteSpect's DNS record.
Diagnostic Procedure: Check if the health check object and performance object are functioning and responding within ten seconds. Check the DNS record. See if SiteSpect is in Bypass mode. See if you are using the SiteSpect DNS record.
Resolution: Update your DNS to use SiteSpect’s DNS record. Restore the health check object and/or performance object.
Error Description: HTTP/S and TCP Level Errors (5xx response).
Impact: 5xx response from SiteSpect. The visitor sees an error message.
Possible Causes: SiteSpect received a 5xx response from the origin because a connection to the origin was abnormally terminated.
Diagnostic Procedure: Check the “processing_time” value in the Proxy Errors dashboard. Request a review of the SiteSpect Engine Error logs by a SiteSpect Support engineer.
Resolution: Resolve any slow responding objects that triggered the Back-End Network Communication Timeout on the origin. Verify that no WAF (web application firewall) or other security measures on the origin triggered this issue.
Error Description: SiteSpect (not the Origin) responded with a 403.
Impact: The visitor sees an error message.
Possible Causes: The request was a prefetch request. SiteSpect has access control enabled for your environment.
Diagnostic Procedure: All prefetch requests return 403. Check if access control is enabled and that the proper whitelist is deployed
Resolution: Disable Access Control or update the whitelist.
Error Description: Unable to Preview. Preview requests fail and the “SITESPECT_PREVIEW_EXP” parameter is visible in the browser’s address bar after the page loads.
Impact: SiteSpect users are unable to preview SiteSpect objects.
Possible Causes: The Preview request is not routing through SiteSpect.
Diagnostic Procedure: Verify that the RTSS header is present in the response. If it is not, then the response was not routed through SiteSpect.
Resolution: Check if the site is in Bypass mode. Resolve the routing issue.