portslie How it works
How portslie measures
Every check tests three things in a row: whether the port is open, whether the service answers in its protocol and whether the answer makes sense. An alert only goes out when it fails twice in a row.
Three levels, in this order
Every check runs through all three. The highest level reached is reported. Only level 3 means: visitors and players get in.
-
1
Port reachable
Something accepts the connection. That proves nothing more, not even a Docker proxy in front of a dead process.
tcp 203.0.113.24:30120 · connected · 21 ms -
2
Protocol responds
The service answers the same query that browsers or game clients send before they show anything.
GET /info.json · 200 · 38 ms -
3
Content plausible
The answer makes sense: slots set, version reported, enough resources loaded. A server with four resources is still starting up.
41/64 players · 212 resources
One incident, minute by minute
A FiveM server crashes at 20:17. The container keeps running, Docker keeps accepting connections on the port. This is how it looks to a port check and this is how it looks to portslie.
One check per minute, in time-lapse. Bar height = level reached.
- Server crashed. Docker keeps accepting connections.
- Second bad check: alert to Discord.
- Level 3 reached: resolved.
One alert per outage
Monitoring that reports every twitch gets muted. That is why three rules apply.
- Only after two bad checks
- A single lost ping is not an outage. An incident starts when two checks in a row are below level 3.
- The change is what gets reported
- One message for the outage, one for the recovery, quiet in between. No repeats every minute.
- If it gets worse, portslie reports it
- If a server drops from level 1 to “unreachable”, a second message follows. It stays one incident.
RP-Server (fivem, 203.0.113.24:30120)
Level 1 of 3 — port open, service not responding
Port open, but /info.json does not answer: TimeoutError: timed out
The port is open, but the service is not responding.
https://portslie.com/ziele/7
RP-Server (203.0.113.24:30120) is responding normally again.
The outage lasted 13 minutes.
https://portslie.com/ziele/7
The experiment
Since 20 September 2026 our test instance has been checking example.com:443 as a Minecraft server. A web server runs there, not a game. A port check would still have reported green almost every time.
| Checks | 1,293 |
|---|---|
| Port open | 1,288 |
| Valid answer as a Minecraft server | 0 |
24.09. 22:51 Stufe 1 29 ms Port offen, aber kein gueltiger Server-List-Ping
24.09. 22:46 Stufe 1 23 ms Port offen, aber kein gueltiger Server-List-Ping
24.09. 22:41 Stufe 1 25 ms Port offen, aber kein gueltiger Server-List-Ping
Know before your visitors notice.
Three targets are free. You see the first result after the first check.
3 targets · checked every 5 minutes · no payment details