Ways to test web access automagically

[Bill Horne]

Thanks for reading this.

I'm in need of a way to test that my web server is working,
automatically, from a location outside my firewall.

I have Apache running and I use it to show a "test" version of the web
site for my son's Boy Scout troop, but some of the Scouts have been
complaining that they can't access it. I've checked out the site, and 
Apache is running and I can access the pages from my LAN - but when I 
tried it from an anonymous surfing page, it hangs intermittently.

Unless Comcast has started to choke port 80 requests, I'm at a loss 
to explain what's happening, so I'd like to set up a robot to
periodically test if the server is OK.

Of course, I'll need a remote machine to run it on, but I have a
relative with DSL, so I think that's covered. What I need are ideas on
how best to set up the tests.

Thanks for any ideas.

Bill Horne

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