The HTTP v2 sensor monitors a web server using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
You can use this sensor to monitor if a website or a specific website element is reachable.
This sensor is in beta status. The operating methods and the available settings are still subject to change. Do not expect that all functions work properly, or that this sensor works as expected at all.
HTTP v2 Sensor
For a detailed list and descriptions of the channels that this sensor can show, see section Channel List.
Sensor in Other Languages
Dutch: HTTP v2
French: HTTP v2
German: HTTP v2
Japanese: HTTP v2
Portuguese: HTTP v2
Russian: HTTP v2
Simplified Chinese: HTTP v2
Spanish: HTTP v2
Remarks
This sensor requires that the Beta Sensors experimental feature is enabled.
If the name contains angle brackets (<>), PRTG replaces them with braces ({}) for security reasons. For more information, see the Knowledge Base: What security features does PRTG include?
This setting is for your information only. You cannot change it.
Tags
Enter one or more tags. Confirm each tag with the Spacebar key, a comma, or the Enter key. You can use tags to group objects and use tag-filtered views later on. Tags are not case-sensitive. Tags are automatically inherited.
It is not possible to enter tags with a leading plus (+) or minus (-) sign, nor tags with parentheses (()) or angle brackets (<>).
For performance reasons, it can take some minutes until you can filter for new tags that you added.
The sensor has the following default tags that are automatically predefined in the sensor's settings when you add the sensor:
http
httpsensor
Priority
Select a priority for the sensor. This setting determines the position of the sensor in lists. The highest priority is at the top of a list. Choose from the lowest priority () to the highest priority ().
HTTP Specific
HTTP Specific
Setting
Description
Timeout per Request (Sec.)
Enter a timeout in seconds for the request. Enter an integer. The maximum timeout value is 900 seconds (15 minutes).
If the reply takes longer than this value, the sensor cancels the request and shows a corresponding error message.
The timeout is per request, not per sensor scan. If a request is redirected, the timeout begins again.
Maximum Number of Redirects
Enter the maximum number of times the sensor scan will follow an HTTP redirect request. The sensor will display the status of the last page before the number of redirects is exhausted. The default number of redirects the sensor will follow is 16. The maximum number of redirects the sensor will follow is 100. Enter 0 if you do not want the sensor to follow any redirects.
URL
Enter the URL that the sensor connects to.
If you enter an absolute URL, the sensor uses this address independently of the IP Address/DNS Name setting of the parent device. You can enter the URL of a web page (to measure the loading time of the page's source code), or enter the URL of an image or of a page asset to measure this element's availability and loading time.
The URL must be URL encoded.
If you monitor an image or a page asset, this can create a high amount of memory load. We recommend that the size of the elements that you want to monitor does not exceed 200 MB.
The default URL is https://%host/. PRTG replaces %host with the IP address or DNS name of the parent device. PRTG does not display the value in the sensor log or the sensor's settings.
Request Method
Select an HTTP request method to determine how the sensor requests the URL:
GET (default): Directly request the website. We recommend that you use this setting for a simple check of the web page.
POST: Send post form data to the URL. If you select this setting, you must enter the data in the POST Body field below. If a POST request is redirected, all further requests are GET requests.
HEAD: Only request the HTTP header from the server without the actual web page. Although this saves bandwidth because it transfers less data, we do not recommended that you use this. This is because the measured request time is not the one that your users experience and you might not be notified of slow results or timeouts.
Content Type
This setting is only visible if you select POST above.
Define the content type of the POST request. The default content type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
POST Body
This setting is only visible if you select POST above.
Enter the data part for the POST request.
No Extensible Markup Language (XML) is allowed here.
Custom Headers
Enter a list of custom headers with their respective values that the HTTP request of the sensor contains. The syntax of a header-value pair is header1:value1.
If you enter more than one header-value pair, enter each pair in one line: header1:value1 header2:value2 header3:value3
Make sure that the HTTP header statement is valid. Otherwise, the sensor request cannot be successful.
Sensor Display
Sensor Display
Setting
Description
Primary Channel
Select a channel from the list to define it as the primary channel. In the device tree, the last value of the primary channel is always displayed below the sensor's name. The available options depend on what channels are available for this sensor.
You can set a different primary channel later by clicking below a channel gauge on the sensor's Overview tab.
Graph Type
Define how different channels are shown for this sensor:
Show channels independently (default): Show a graph for each channel.
Stack channels on top of each other: Stack channels on top of each other to create a multi-channel graph. This generates a graph that visualizes the different components of your total traffic. You cannot use this option in combination with manual Vertical Axis Scaling (available in the channel settings).
Stack Unit
This setting is only visible if you select Stack channels on top of each other above.
Select a unit from the list. All channels with this unit are stacked on top of each other. By default, you cannot exclude single channels from stacking if they use the selected unit. However, there is an advanced procedure to do so.
Debug Options
Debug Options
Setting
Description
Result Handling
Define what PRTG does with the sensor result:
Discard result: Do not store the sensor result.
Store result: Store the last sensor result in the \Logs\sensors subfolder of the PRTG data directory on the probe system. The file name is Result of Sensor [ID].log. This setting is for debugging purposes. PRTG overwrites this file with each scanning interval.
This option is not available when the sensor runs on the hosted probe of a PRTG Hosted Monitor instance.
Inherited Settings
By default, all of these settings are inherited from objects that are higher in the hierarchy. We recommend that you change them centrally in the root group settings if necessary. To change a setting for this object only, click under the corresponding setting name to disable the inheritance and to display its options.
The minimum scanning interval of this sensor is 1 minute.
The recommended scanning interval of this sensor is 1 minute.
Scanning Interval
For more information, see section Root Group Settings, section Scanning Interval.
Schedules, Dependencies, and Maintenance Window
You cannot interrupt the inheritance for schedules, dependencies, and maintenance windows. The corresponding settings from the parent objects are always active. However, you can define additional schedules, dependencies, and maintenance windows. They are active at the same time as the parent objects' settings.
Schedules, Dependencies, and Maintenance Window
For more information, see section Root Group Settings, section Schedules, Dependencies, and Maintenance Window.
Access Rights
Access Rights
For more information, see section Root Group Settings, section Access Rights.
Channel Unit Configuration
Which channel units are available depends on the sensor type and the available parameters. If no configurable channels are available, this field shows No configurable channels.
Channel Unit Configuration
For more information, see section Root Group Settings, section Channel Unit Configuration.
Smart URL Replacement
Instead of entering a complete address in the URL field of an HTTP sensor, you can only enter the protocol followed by a colon and three forward slashes (this means that you can enter either http:/// or https:///, or even a simple forward slash / as the equivalent for http:///). PRTG automatically fills in the parent device's IP Address/DNS Name in front of the third forward slash.
Whether this results in a valid URL or not depends on the IP address or Domain Name System (DNS) name of the parent device. In combination with cloning devices, you can use smart URL replacement to create many similar devices.
For example, if you create a device with the DNS name www.example.com and you add an HTTP sensor to it, you can provide values in the following ways:
If you enter https:/// in the URL field, PRTG automatically creates the URL https://www.example.com/
If you enter /help in the URL field, PRTG automatically creates and monitor the URL http://www.example.com/help
It is also possible to provide a port number in the URL field. It is taken over by the device's DNS name and is internally added, for example, http://:8080/
Smart URL replacement does not work for sensors that run on the probe device.
Channel List
Which channels the sensor actually shows might depend on the target device, the available components, and the sensor setup.
Channel
Description
Bytes Received
The number of bytes received
Downtime
In the channel table on the Overview tab, this channel never shows any values. PRTG uses this channel in graphs and reports to show the amount of time in which the sensor was in the Down status