x10Hosting Server Monitor (created by Piotr GRD)

[callumacrae]

Clever

~Callum

 

[markhere]

You will probably run out of red ink monitoring stoli

 

[Piotr GRD]

No worries, I've got lots of ink in every colour. ; ) hehe ; )

_________________________________________________


I found that majority of the visitors on my monitor are from United States.
So for the convenience of them I've just added second timeline in EST (Eastern Standard Time) apart of the main one being in UTC. I hope this will be useful for all of them.
The same time zone is used for default on this forum. Unless you think that different time zone I should implement then please, suggest one. Thank you. : )

http://grd.net.pl/x10hosting/monitor/


Piotr GRD

 

[Sharky]

Unlike these other most common "monitors" that simply ping the servers - I do it in different way.

For "HTTP" - I'm actually sending a HTTP request and I am checking if the valid HTTP respond is sent.
For "FTP" - I'm trying to actually login with INcorrect username (while having no valid login credentials to each server) and empty password - if I receive "530 Login Authentication Failed" then I assume FTP works.
For "cPanel" I am sending HTTP request and I'm checking if valid cPanel login page is sent to me.
For x10Hosting main page and forums - the same, I am sending HTTP requests and I am checking if I receive valid pages.
For nameservers - I am asking for "A" records for x10hosting.com domain name and checking if such record is sent to me.

As for MySQL - I do not monitor it here, I do know that usually MySQL servers do not accept external connections. I do monitor MySQL on some other hosts only where I do have my own testing accounts and for this purpose I have installed a working PHP and MySQL powered scripts - by sending HTTP requests for these testing scripts installed I do know if MySQL work or not.


But yes, you're right about majority of such home made status scripts, very often just copy-pasted.

Ehh... Careful you don't get banned for too
Any unsuccessful logins.

And, Corey already knows the reliability stats. He's like... The Matrix.

 

[cybrax]

For "FTP" - I'm trying to actually login with INcorrect username

Wonder what it would be showing now for FTP connection attempts using correct credentials?

 

[Piotr GRD]

Ehh... Careful you don't get banned for too
Any unsuccessful logins.
(...)

I was blocked at some servers (not x10Hosting) after many such attempts of unsuccesful login attepts through FTP, so the webhost admins had to put IP of my monitoring server on the whitelist. But this is rather rare.

Wonder what it would be showing now for FTP connection attempts using correct credentials?

By looking into the support section of the forum I assume that there is (or was) a problem with login, server does not accept login credentials. I've also spot some messages about problems with MySQL - this is often related (but I don't know if this is the case on x10Hosting servers, too, that while MySQL does not work properly FTP server can not check login details in the database).

Obviously my monitor would show orange colour - "invalid data received".
However I do not have accounts on all x10 servers and even on these webhosts that I have - I don't monitor the servers FTP in such way.

What would be useful is monitoring of MySQL. But for this I also would need a test account on every server.

 

[isaac008]

Very interesting, shows you how everyone should switch to paid hosting if they really need reliability
Not trashing x10, I understand that there is no way they can handle everything will the masses of people "free loading." I used to run a company 4-5 years ago and realized it wasn't profitable. Props to them for being up for so long.

 

[masshuu]

The issue i have with this is that he is monitoring the results from 1 location, which is Poland. If he was monitoring from multiple locations in the states, like Dallas, Pennsylvania, LA, then i would find his results slightly all accurate. I see quite frequently when it shows 2 or 3 or even all 4 servers not responding to a certain service, for a few lines or for an hour. The issue is that the services are in fact running just fine at the time(if httpd went down on 3 servers for 3 and a half hours, we would have a couple thousand tickets, as noted here http://grd.net.pl/x10hosting/monitor/archive/?2010-12-07 )
Also interesting, we had some ftp issues with stoli yesterday that lasted almost half the day, yet his service shows it was up and just fine all day.
All in all, i would not take his service at face value.

 

[Piotr GRD]

I found at least one topic for each of three servers that were unavailable at that 3 and a half hour time period that you mention. Additionally at that time I was online by myself and I've tested these three servers manually from servers in Germany, Netherlands and Canada and I found it also inaccessible.

As for the FTP issues - I think that people were mentioned no possibility to login, but no problems with connecting through FTP recently - am I right or wrong? As I do not try to actually login with valid credential then I can not detect that. But I was able to connect that's why my monitor shows FTP green.


I do monitor only from one location and sometimes it can be unreliable, but as I do monitor at the moment 20 webhosts, dosens (more than 80) servers total - I can easily find all unreliable results (that I can not connect to a bunch of servers at the same time) and as fast as possible I always try to delete these unreliable results. Last time was today around 03:00 UTC - you can find white "no info" line.

Of course - if you want to have website monitored from various locations - use more than one monitoring service or use some professional paid one. My service is free, for guidance only, reliable for more than 99% according to my more than a year experience. But as the users don't have access to any other more reliable results - I think that my results are more than enough for majority of them.

 

[Corey]

If I find the IPs doing this monitoring I will ban them.

We use two official monitoring services, Pingdom and Binary Canary to monitor the servers from multiple locations around the world. Yours do not match up ANYWHERE close to what they show. The servers were NOT down for 3 hours yesterday, not even close. There are also a ton of other inconsistencies with what pingdom and BC show compared to what you do.

 

[masshuu]

The issue is that if the server was down for 3 and a half hours, we would have more than "a few" tickets. Theres over 15000 accounts on each server, with each server getting 3-20 hits a seconds depending on the load. Thats over 45000 accounts that would be down, or between 37800 to 252000 page views lost between that time period. Those numbers are a bit of a guess, but based on what numbers are available, i think its within the ballpark.

 

[Piotr GRD]

@masshuu

But only website owners will report the issue in here, regular visitors of these websites won't. And basing on my experience - some people that used to issues on (any) free webhosts already don't report problems so quickly, very often just wait and confirm they're obesrvations with what is already reported by someone else. What's for to write more if someone - for example - already posted a topic "server X is not working"?


Stoli at that 3 and half hours time (your reply was almost 10 hours later, so no wonder it worked for you):
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143484-stoli-down-monent.html

Chopin:
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143490-i-can-not-access-sabbirtanvir-pcriot-com.html
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143499-website-not-open.html
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143498-free-site-not-opening.html

That was on Starka when I've checked last time if I remember correctly, now account does not exist:
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143491-temporarily-unavailable.html

I don't know which websites/servers, I don't see it provided in the topics:
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143487-why-does-my-website-not-work.html
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143483-my-sites-down.html
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143478-unreachable.html

So I found 8 topics.

For some websites pages were displayed in the form "The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." after a long waiting time. Remember that my monitor waits only 15 seconds and when I've tried manually - I did get such responce in more than 15 seconds, so obviously my monitor shows red "time out".


@ Corey
No, the servers were not down at that time. They did work, but answer after a long time, more than 15 seconds or simply times out and with incorrect answer in the type of mentioned by me in the paragraph above. So my monitor shows "time out, >15 seconds waiting time". And I DID confirm my results at that time manually from three different locations. And I have (at least) that 8 above mentioned topics for confirmation of the problems.

If you wanted me to not monitor your servers from one location in Europe - you could wrote this at the very beginning, before I announced the service publicly. I've asked Bryon and Brandon that they forward my messages about it to you - did they forward it to you (before I announced the service on the forums publicly)? I hope they did.


PS.
I don't hide. But ban is not the civilized method to do such things in my opinion, simple message sent to me either through PM or better through email (address available in the footer of my pages) with request to hide the results from public is a much much better and civilized solution. I'm a serious person and every time when I've informed admins of various webhosts about starting my service - before announcing it publicly, just like I did it in here, too - and the admins/owners replied me that they don't want me to show results publicly - I respect their decission and results are hidden and no-one even knows that such monitoring exists.

By the way, rethorical question: if some customer, any customer, either of your free or paid services, will monitor the server that he's on by himself - he has such right to check availability of his own website, right? - using methods that don't match to your other monitoring methods/results - you'll simply ban the service of your client?... Your customer.

 

[Sharky]

@masshuu

But only website owners will report the issue in here, regular visitors of these websites won't. And basing on my experience - some people that used to issues on (any) free webhosts already don't report problems so quickly, very often just wait and confirm they're obesrvations with what is already reported by someone else. What's for to write more if someone - for example - already posted a topic "server X is not working"?


Stoli at that 3 and half hours time (your reply was almost 10 hours later, so no wonder it worked for you):
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143484-stoli-down-monent.html

Chopin:
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143490-i-can-not-access-sabbirtanvir-pcriot-com.html
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143499-website-not-open.html
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143498-free-site-not-opening.html

That was on Starka when I've checked last time if I remember correctly, now account does not exist:
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143491-temporarily-unavailable.html

I don't know which websites/servers, I don't see it provided in the topics:
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143487-why-does-my-website-not-work.html
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143483-my-sites-down.html
http://x10hosting.com/forums/free-hosting/143478-unreachable.html

So I found 8 topics.

For some websites pages were displayed in the form "The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." after a long waiting time. Remember that my monitor waits only 15 seconds and when I've tried manually - I did get such responce in more than 15 seconds, so obviously my monitor shows red "time out".


@ Corey
No, the servers were not down at that time. They did work, but answer after a long time, more than 15 seconds or simply times out and with incorrect answer in the type of mentioned by me in the paragraph above. So my monitor shows "time out, >15 seconds waiting time". And I DID confirm my results at that time manually from three different locations. And I have (at least) that 8 above mentioned topics for confirmation of the problems.

If you wanted me to not monitor your servers from one location in Europe - you could wrote this at the very beginning, before I announced the service publicly. I've asked Bryon and Brandon that they forward my messages about it to you - did they forward it to you (before I announced the service on the forums publicly)? I hope they did.


PS.
I don't hide. But ban is not the civilized method to do such things in my opinion, simple message sent to me either through PM or better through email (address available in the footer of my pages) with request to hide the results from public is a much much better and civilized solution. I'm a serious person and every time when I've informed admins of various webhosts about starting my service - before announcing it publicly, just like I did it in here, too - and the admins/owners replied me that they don't want me to show results publicly - I respect their decission and results are hidden and no-one even knows that such monitoring exists.

By the way, rethorical question: if some customer, any customer, either of your free or paid services, will monitor the server that he's on by himself - he has such right to check availability of his own website, right? - using methods that don't match to your other monitoring methods/results - you'll simply ban the service of your client?... Your customer.

I'll have to remember this one... No consent is the same as consent. What's the point in asking if you're going to carry on regardless of receiving a response?

Re. the last part; there is a slight difference between self-monitoring for your own use and providing a (evidently) flaky reporting service for others. Don't take it the wrong way, it's clear there's been effort put in to this, but you've not approached it in the right way.

"But only website owners will report the issue in here, regular visitors of these websites won't. "

Regular visitors will report issues to the site owner.

 

[Piotr GRD]

I'll have to remember this one... No consent is the same as consent. What's the point in asking if you're going to carry on regardless of receiving a response?

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but if you refer to me asking admins for responce before publishing my service - I've wrote twice that if they have nothing against I will make it public. After second time I had only one reply about hostnames which I removed and asked again (third time) if they have anything more against existence of my service - no responce. So in the fourth message I've wrote that because of no responce I assume that they have nothing against and I'll publish it at that and that day so if any comments, please respond - no reply again. I think I did put enough effort on my end to get an opinion from admins before publishing it.

Re. the last part; there is a slight difference between self-monitoring for your own use and providing a (evidently) flaky reporting service for others. (...)

As I wrote above - I've asked admins before publishing it. And my last paragraph with rethorical question was about: ban vs. message "please, turn it off". Really ban is the only way?... Even if not the only - why the first thing to think about instead of simply send an email request for this or that to the author of service?

If admins want me to UNpublish my service - I am awaiting for email message with request for it. And as quickly as I'll be online I'll hide the results from being publicly available. Eventually I'll ask for the reason and give my arguments to re-consider the decission trying to start a constructive conversation between admins/owners of two services (hosting and monitoring).


I do not provide any "flaky reporting service". I am putting as much effort into reliability as possible on my end. Every result that I have possibility I check manually from different locations and I'm 99+% sure of reliability of my results as to accessibility to the servers for a regular visitors. But as it's only 99+% sure, not 100% - that's why my service is clearly described as "for guidance only".

Check my other monitoring service that exists for more than a year (can be easily found with Google or whatever) - it's used as reliable and useful even by the admins of that other free host. It was used by former owner/admin and is used by current owner, too. Recently system admin of that host even posted a screenshot from my service, not from any other, to show something to users on the support forum while there were problems with one of the servers. Results of that monitoring can be confirmed with another similar service provided by someone else from Great Britain. So... I'm really 99+% sure of reliability of my service and if any doubts I always put much effort into tests if there is really nothing wrong on my end.


----------------------------------------------

Do you have doubts - how it's possible that three servers (Chopin, Starka, Stoli) are often reported by my service as "time out" at the exactly same time? I had doubts, too, I was very suspicious of why is that and really triple checked everything on my end. My results of accessibility to the servers are correct and confirmed - whenever I'm online - from different locations. It's suspicious even for me, but I'm pretty sure my results.

If you check my archives - it started at the November 21st. Before November 21st there was no sign of such thing that these three servers are very slow/unresponsible at the exactly same time. Maybe something has been change in the configuration at that time?... I don't know, pure guess work.

 

[masshuu]

Heres a basic question. I only had a chance to look at the FTP log, but i wonder if you use a proxy service or some other to route your checks with. Second, do you use different IPs or some other way to connect for checking each service? I don't care what anyone says, 8 tickets is to low for the service to be down, but high enough to make me wonder if its something else. If you used different IPs or methods of connectivity for http and ftp/cpanel, it would explain why one is up and the others are down and that investing $10 a month in a US/Canadian vps to do monitoring from 2 or more locations would improve your service.



[edit]

While corey absolutely hates these services, i am on neither side.
Currently with yours, i would ask that you take it down until you do several things.
First would be delaying the output by 6 hours as we have had users who look at these, see their server marked as down(although they don't even check their site or its down for 30 seconds due to abuse) and open a ticket stating their server is down.
Second: Multiple locations. I realize this is a free service, but monitoring from 1 location is "never" good. That is why Corey does use services that monitor from 10+ locations to avoid routing or other issues he has no control over. 3 geographically separated locations is the minimum i would recommend, for example Europe, East coast, West Coast
Third: Retries after a timeout. When it times out, try again after 30 seconds. My ISP has shotty peering, so sometimes i have to hit reload when i visit large sites like paypal.com as the connection fails the first time. You need to remember that with the timeout isn't continuously trying. Its sending 1 request which can either not get accepted at all, or its accepted but then no application data is revived or sent.

 

[Corey]

I've attached an image of the uptime from Boru for the past 20 days, when this specific monitor was created. It loads a webpage from Boru every minute and looks for an exact phrase on the page. If that phrase is not found within 30s it is considered down.

This monitor is from Pingdom.com, the same company that Twitter, Alexa, and Microsoft trust to monitor their servers. Checks are performed and confirmed from all over the globe.

The exact issue I have with your monitoring is that it is not accurate. Whether you post 'for guidance' or not does not matter. People do not read, they will look at your monitoring which is showing incorrect data and accept that as being 100% true. We used to have a public monitor ran by a member... one time it got firewalled and reported a server down even though it was not. We had over 10 tickets pop up in the following 20 minutes with people saying their server was down. Not one of those people actually checked, they went by the 'unofficial' monitor. After this happened multiple times we pulled the monitor offline.

If a customer wants to monitor their site via their own service or another one that is fine. There is a big difference from a customer keeping track of their uptime vs someone providing inaccurate readings to the public.

The below image shows Boru's uptime at 99.57% for the past 20 days with a combined total of 33 outages ranging from 57 seconds to 40 minutes and 55 seconds. Now if your monitoring showed the same stats I would not have a problem with it. Unfortunately you have not invested hundreds of thousands into an accurate monitoring service like Pingdom has. So I'm going to trust Pingdom when it tells me what my uptime is.

 

[Piotr GRD]

@ Corey

Note the difference that Pingdom waits 30 seconds and I wait only 15 seconds. So if the page is served in 15.001+ seconds Pingdom will say it is up, while my service will say "time out (>15s.) or offline". So the difference between the results will be for sure, but what's for we, human race, have our brains? We can not trust ANY automatic service 100%, so if on my graph red is right beside blue and dark green - it's very high possibility and quite obvious for me that responces are simply very slow and not the server is offline. Interpretation of data is important. I know such things happen, but it's simply dumb for me if anyone takes any red on any monitor as down without thinking at least for a minute. If such support tickets are created - these users should get an interesting reply about using the brain before taking any assumptions. Of course reply of professional support will be patient explanation of real situation - as many times as needed.

By looking at the number and time of visits on my monitors of various webhosts my experience is that majority of people rather view the monitoring results after having problems by themselves - to confirm if that's only their ISP, their computer, or not. Of course there are always maniacs that will do reverse, but we have to used to it, I think. I prefer to be useful for 990 people and having to tolerate 10 such maniacs rather than not being useful and helpful for those 990 people.

[joke] You should like my service better than Pingdom, you say Pingdom found 40 minutes long outage of Boru in last 20 days - my service found none such long outage, the longest was at December 7th around 14:00UTC, but I think the service was rather very slow at that time. [/joke]

And being serious - When looking at last 20 days of HTTP access to the service on Boru - I find no any significant difference. December 9th at your graph is interesting for me, as my monitor didn't report any problem while Pingdom did. However considering that the methods used are different, I request UNexisting page (for not using anyone's account resources), Pingdom specific existing page. If you want me to monitor the same phrase on the exactly same page I can start it and we will have better comparison. I can even wait 30 seconds (but only for that one specific test page, not for all requests).

You say about difference between public service and that used for own purposes. That's why I've asked you - through Brandon and Bryon since I had no any direct contact with you - if you do have anything against it or any other comments before publishing it.


@ masshuu

I don't have any money to invest into any VPS or anything to increase number of locations. I have some scripts installed here and there on regular shared webhosts that I can use occasionally - and I do it manually from time to time - to confirm results, but I can not obviously use it all the time every two minutes because of resource limitations.
And being honest - I have no plans to start fully proffessional monitoring service.

My main goal is being useful, helpful, give something from myself to the wide meaning of the internet community. My monitoring service at the beginning was for personal purposes only. However the people on the webhost that I used did need such service, someone encouraged me, and that's how it started. After a while I started to think that this can be my second way to give something from myself to the internet community, especially for those that use free or cheap webhosts and can't afford any better paid monitoring services. First thing that I did - for couple of years much, recently less because of no time - is giving help with HTML, CSS, PHP, DNS, scripts installations, configurations etc. etc. for all those that need it. In many projects - small or big - there is a line or two of code from me and this (and "thanks, Piotr") is very rewarding for myself that I helped, that at least part of my time was not completely wasted like the rest of my real life.

I use the same IP, the same hardware, no any proxies, to check HTTP on 80, FTP on 21, login page to cPanel on 2082.
But I find it not in any way surprising that one service is working fine while the second not. It's very often the case, believe me, I do monitor various servers for more than a year already.

Your suggestions to increase reliability are valid, I agree. But as I wrote above - I don't have funds to do that and I don't really such aspirations to create fully professional service. What I do is trying to be helpful and useful for 990 people - while unfortunatelly having 10 that will use the service incorrectly, sorry. Even if proportions will be 900 : 100, or 800 : 200 or 700 : 300 - I prefer to be heplful for those 700 than not at all.

 

[Sharky]

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but if you refer to me asking admins for responce before publishing my service - I've wrote twice that if they have nothing against I will make it public. After second time I had only one reply about hostnames which I removed and asked again (third time) if they have anything more against existence of my service - no responce. So in the fourth message I've wrote that because of no responce I assume that they have nothing against and I'll publish it at that and that day so if any comments, please respond - no reply again. I think I did put enough effort on my end to get an opinion from admins before publishing it.




As I wrote above - I've asked admins before publishing it. And my last paragraph with rethorical question was about: ban vs. message "please, turn it off". Really ban is the only way?... Even if not the only - why the first thing to think about instead of simply send an email request for this or that to the author of service?

If admins want me to UNpublish my service - I am awaiting for email message with request for it. And as quickly as I'll be online I'll hide the results from being publicly available. Eventually I'll ask for the reason and give my arguments to re-consider the decission trying to start a constructive conversation between admins/owners of two services (hosting and monitoring).


I do not provide any "flaky reporting service". I am putting as much effort into reliability as possible on my end. Every result that I have possibility I check manually from different locations and I'm 99+% sure of reliability of my results as to accessibility to the servers for a regular visitors. But as it's only 99+% sure, not 100% - that's why my service is clearly described as "for guidance only".

Check my other monitoring service that exists for more than a year (can be easily found with Google or whatever) - it's used as reliable and useful even by the admins of that other free host. It was used by former owner/admin and is used by current owner, too. Recently system admin of that host even posted a screenshot from my service, not from any other, to show something to users on the support forum while there were problems with one of the servers. Results of that monitoring can be confirmed with another similar service provided by someone else from Great Britain. So... I'm really 99+% sure of reliability of my service and if any doubts I always put much effort into tests if there is really nothing wrong on my end.


----------------------------------------------

Do you have doubts - how it's possible that three servers (Chopin, Starka, Stoli) are often reported by my service as "time out" at the exactly same time? I had doubts, too, I was very suspicious of why is that and really triple checked everything on my end. My results of accessibility to the servers are correct and confirmed - whenever I'm online - from different locations. It's suspicious even for me, but I'm pretty sure my results.

If you check my archives - it started at the November 21st. Before November 21st there was no sign of such thing that these three servers are very slow/unresponsible at the exactly same time. Maybe something has been change in the configuration at that time?... I don't know, pure guess work.

Can I punch you in the face? ... Zzz ... No answer?

Lack of response does not equate to acceptance.

And I'd say that the comments re banning the ip if discovered constitutes a request to cease the service.

Plus, with regards to funds... Banner ads?

 

[Piotr GRD]

Lack of response does not equate to acceptance.

What about when your GSM services provider, your bank, whatever makes changes in the agreement with you? There is usually a note that if you won't cancel your services in X days or you don't contact at all that's mean that you do accept new agreement. And I wrote specifically in the last reply that because of no answer I assume they have nothing against the existence of the service. No reply for this.

And I'd say that the comments re banning the ip if discovered constitutes a request to cease the service.

Not for me. I am awaiting for direct request through PM or better through email. Some note about willingness to ban IP on the public forum does not constitutes the same for me.

Besides - I am not hiding, IP of my server monitoring can be easily found, with requests through HTTP I even introduce myself with specific easy to indentify phrase in the User Agent string.

But really - ban or even just warning about ban INSTEAD of simply ask to turn it off or hide from public is not the way to go in my opinion. We are equal users in the internet and we should respect each other and not scare with bans each other - this is last thing to do when everything else (ie. simple words "hide it from public, please" - I didn't receive such from x10Hosting admins) won't work.

Plus, with regards to funds... Banner ads?

1. No funds. 2. And I don't really have aspirations to create fully professional service. I want to be useful for users within these hardware/software possibilities that I have currently, that's something that I want to give to the internet community, but NOT something that I want to build ANY business on or invest anything more than my time just for this purpose. My hardware did work for around 12-16 hours per day anyway, now it's working 24 hours per day because of monitoring and the electricity bill for that 8-12 additional hours per day (and my time) is the only thing I invest. That's something that I do in a spare time - instead of watching TV I'm trying to do something volountarily for other people.


If someone can afford - please use other more professional and more reliable monitoring services.
If someone can not afford - use my service and remember that it's 99+ but not 100% accurate.

 

[Sharky]

What about when your GSM services provider, your bank, whatever makes changes in the agreement with you? There is usually a note that if you won't cancel your services in X days or you don't contact at all that's mean that you do accept new agreement.

Bollocks. Part of the agreement that I agreed to when I signed up with my bank / mobile phone provider was that changes to the terms were opt-out. The bank didn't sign me up to a new agreement without my knowledge. I signed to say I wanted the service at the start, and as part of that agreement I signed to say they may change the terms of that agreement with a notice period.

This is completely different. You do not have an agreement so your example does not apply to this case.