Other methods of measuring Web application user behaviour and performance have disadvantages not present with real user passive packet capture. capture.

Client-side monitoring: Measurement software is installed into the client system. The software watches transactions, measures response times and periodically reports to a central management system. The advantage of this approach is accuracy. There are two primary drawbacks: the resources needed for monitoring and reporting to the central system impact on other processes on the client; and the technique is completely unsuitable for a large user base on the public Internet.

On-server monitoring: This technique is used by some Citrix monitoring providers. Measurement software is installed into the Citrix server. As with client-side monitoring, the advantage is accuracy, but the drawback is its negative impact on server performance.

Log file analysis: Servers maintain logs of their activity. When analyzed, these reveal some of the information passive packet capture yields, but not all: for example, log files can't show how fast the server delivers content to users, which is one of the most important performance metrics. Log file analysis also tends to be very time consuming, and maintaining the logs takes a great deal of storage.

Remote agent monitoring: Usually outsourced, it does not monitor real users. Instead it uses a remote appliance to simulate clients, transmitting scripted requests to the server on a regular basis. Response time is measured, but since the remote appliances tend to be located near Internet hubs, research shows the time is not representative of response time experienced by real clients.

It is also unable to discern problems and errors experienced by real users, since the scripted transactions are only an approximation of the actual pattern of real user activity and for reasons of cost can't begin to sample all possible user actions.

Finally, comprehensive monitoring using this technique adds significant load to the server, adversely affecting performance and the experience of real users.

Javascript tagging: A snippet of javascript is placed in each Web page. The javascript allows the client system to send messages back to a central server every time the page is viewed. This allows the user's path through the application to be traced, but does not give response time information.

In addition, research indicates up to 10% of Web users on the public Internet may disable javascript in their browsers, and these users will not be recorded.

Even where users allow tagging to operate, its records of use can be inaccurate: if the user aborts the transaction before the script downloads, there is no record of the page request; similarly, if the javascript downloads and then the user experiences an error, the record wrongly indicates a problem-free transaction.

The javascript can also be difficult and time-consuming to insert, and many implementations are outsourced, so that all performance data is held by a third party.

How does Triometric Analyzer real user monitoring work?