log outbound requests

We have a web application running on an IIS 5 server and it makes a request
to a remote web site to retrieve data. This process is not working and we
are trying to troubleshoot whether the problem lies with our web server or
the remote web server. As far as I know the IIS logs only collect inbound
requests, is that correct. My question is, how can we log the outbound
requests the web application is making to the remote server to see if that
is indeed happening? Do we need a third party tool for this. I know network
monitor will record the out bound packets but is there a tool that will
present the data in a more user friendly way?
thanks for any help
Colin Bondi

Hi Colin,

Very good question!

In your scenario, I'd suggest you can choose performance monitor to monitor
your web activity very easily. You can type "perfmon" in the start->run to
startup the tool.

In the System monitor, you can right-click the main frame and press "add
counters", then a add counters windows pops up. You can choose "web
service" performance object or other for your scenario, then there is a lot
of counters will be listed for you. You can pick up one or more and specify
each instance for each counter. After that, performance monitor will check
these counters dynamically for you.

Furthermore, you can also create more logs for some specific tasks. You can
right-click the "Performance Logs and Alerts" from the left panel of
performance mmc and choose "New Log Settings...". Give your new setting a
name and choose the counters as above. You can also specify several log
file formats; csv, binary etc.

The online documentation of performance monitor will also help you a lot on
using this tool.

Does this answer your question? Thank you for using Microsoft NewsGroup!

Wei-Dong Xu
Microsoft Product Support Services
Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
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