False Positives
What is a False Positive?
A false positive occurs when a system sends out notifications that your website or server is down when, in reality, it is still operational. This can happen due to temporary network issues, slow response times, or brief connectivity hiccups that do not indicate a real outage.
False positives can be frustrating, as they may cause unnecessary concern and interruptions.
How Lighthouse Alerts Handles False Positives
Unlike other monitoring systems that rely on multiple failed checks (which can themselves be unreliable and delay notifications), Lighthouse Alerts provides three mechanisms to help avoid false positives:
1. Monitor minimum failures
If your server may have temporary issues, you can adjust its settings to open an incident only after multiple failures.
This setting skips creating incidents altogether until we detected a number of failures greater than the number you set.
2. Channel alert settings
This allows you to customize when each channel will receive alerts about incidents.
1. Configurable Alert Thresholds
- Users can specify that an alert should only be triggered after a certain number of alarms.
- This means that if a single check fails due to a temporary glitch, Lighthouse Alerts can wait and retry before notifying you.
2. Delay-Based Notification Control
- Users can set up alerts to be sent only after a specific time has passed since the first detection of an issue.
- This prevents notifications for brief, self-resolving issues and ensures that only persistent problems trigger alerts.
3. Multiple Monitoring Methods
- Lighthouse Alerts continuously monitors your website or server using different methods (HTTP, ICMP, DNS checks, etc.), reducing the likelihood of false positives caused by a single point of failure.
3. Schedules
Schedules allow you to configure days and times when failing a check of your monitor is expected.
Example:
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Your website deploys every weekday at 1:00 AM for 15 minutes, showing a maintenance page. You have a monitor that detects this page, but you don’t want unnecessary alerts.
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To prevent this, create a Schedule for Monday–Friday, 1:00–1:15 AM, and assign it to the monitor. This way, alerts won’t be triggered during routine maintenance.
Visit our Schedules page to know more about schedules.
Why This Matters
By allowing users to customize when and how they receive alerts, Lighthouse Alerts ensures that:
- You get reliable notifications without unnecessary noise.
- Brief, self-resolving issues don’t trigger alerts.
- You have full control over how urgent issues are handled.