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https://fourmilab.ch

Infrastructure

· 9 checks — DNS, redirects, IPv6, crawlability, URL variants, and domain intelligence rolled into one auditable list.
SCORE
90
GRADE
A
FIX
1
REVIEW
3
PASS
4
INFO
1
Probed from Madrid, Spain
200 OK
Checks
9
4 PASS 3 REVIEW 1 FIX
D
CDN & Delivery
Action
No CDN detected
FIX
No CDN detected
Warning::
No CDN detected
A CDN can significantly improve load times for users around the world by caching content at edge nodes closer to them.
No CDN detected

Consider using a CDN to improve global delivery speed and reduce origin load.

B
Crawlability
robots.txt present, no sitemap
REVIEW
robots.txt present, no sitemap
Info::
robots.txt is present
Got: 2500 bytes
Info::
No sitemap.xml found
A sitemap helps search engines discover and index your pages more efficiently.
Info::
robots.txt does not reference a sitemap
Add a 'Sitemap:' directive to robots.txt so search engines can discover your sitemap.

A sitemap helps search engines discover and index your pages more efficiently.

Why this matters

No sitemap.xml — Google relies on crawl-graph discovery alone, slowing indexing of deep or fresh URLs.

Learn more

A sitemap accelerates Google's discovery of new and updated content. Most CMSes auto-generate one; static-site frameworks need a build-step plugin. Reference it from robots.txt and submit in Search Console to confirm Google can fetch it.

Source: sitemaps.org / Google Search Central

Add a 'Sitemap:' directive to robots.txt so search engines can discover your sitemap.

Why this matters

robots.txt omits Sitemap: directive — crawlers must fetch /sitemap.xml by convention; reliable but missing the explicit hint.

Source: sitemaps.org

robots.txt 200 OK
Size 2500 B Sitemaps referenced 0 User-agents MJ12bot, DotBot, MauiBot, TurnitinBot, *, AhrefsBot, SemrushBot, NPBot, Twiceler # Moronic Twiceler cgi-bin chaser, Twitterbot Blocking No — crawling allowed
# robots.txt for http://www.fourmilab.ch

User-agent: *
Disallow: /bullets/zounds                     # Audio files for illustration only
Disallow: /cgi-bin/                           # Dynamic services
Disallow: /documents/DOS/   	    	      # Denial of service countermeasures
Disallow: /hotbits/figures                    # Figures for illustration only
Disallow: /hotbits/source                     # Source code
Disallow: /earthview/cache/                   # Ephemeral files
Disallow: /earthview/satellite.html           # Satellite orbital elements
Disallow: /entrenous/                         # Files for specific people
Disallow: /etexts/www/gergel		      # Mirror of Gergel PDF books
Disallow: /goldberg/                          # Under construction
Disallow: /netfone/                           # Renamed to /speakfree
Disallow: /serverstats/                       # Changes every day, confusing
Disallow: /sitemap.html                       # Temporary link to home page
Disallow: /speakfree/unix/prior-releases      # Obsolete releases
Disallow: /speakfree/windows/prior-releases   # Obsolete releases
Disallow: /uscode/8usc/www/                   # Bulk text of 8 USC
Disallow: /uscode/26usc/www/                  # Bulk text of 26 USC
Disallow: /ustax/                             # Renamed to /uscode/26usc
Disallow: /yoursky/catalogues/                # Yoursky object catalogues

User-agent: NPBot
Disallow: / 	    	    	    	      # Nameprotect.com spybot blocking

User-agent: Twiceler	    	    	      # Moronic Twiceler cgi-bin chaser
Disallow: /

# Twitterbot blasts in dozens of requests in seconds,
User-agent: Twitterbot
Disallow: /

# AhrefsBot generates lots of traffic and provides no
# benefit to sites it scrapes.  It is also known for
# ignoring robots.txt, so we also block it in .htaccess.
User-agent: AhrefsBot
Disallow: /

# MJ12bot generates a lot of traffic to no benefit.
# It claims to respect robots.txt.  Let's see.
User-agent: MJ12bot
Disallow: /

# DotBot (Moz.com) crawls indiscriminately to no
# benefit but their own.
User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /

# MauiBot crawls indiscriminately and quickly, and
# nobody knows what it is.  Comes from an AWS
# address range.
User-agent: MauiBot
Disallow: /

# SEMrushBot is up to no good. In December 2019, it accounted for
# almost 4% of all hits on the site.
User-agent: SemrushBot
Disallow: /

# TurnitinBot is a "plagiarism" checker that hits the site
# indiscriminately.
User-agent: TurnitinBot
Disallow: /


sitemap.xml No sitemap found

No sitemap found

Adding a sitemap helps search engines discover your pages.

B
URL Variants
www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS
REVIEW
www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS
Critical::
Both www and non-www versions serve content
Got: Both variants return 200 Expected: One variant 301-redirects to the other
Info::
HTTP correctly 301-redirects to HTTPS

www / non-www

200https://www.fourmilab.ch/
200https://fourmilab.ch/

Inconsistent — duplicate content risk

HTTP → HTTPS

301http://fourmilab.ch/ https://fourmilab.ch/

Consistent

B
TLS Certificate Expiry & Recommendations
69 days until leaf cert expires — 3 issues to address
REVIEW

Certificate validity

69
days left
0d 30d 60d 90d+

Recommended actions

  • Add the preload directive and submit to hstspreload.org once max-age + includeSubDomains are in place
  • Enable DNSSEC on your domain for DNS spoofing protection
  • Enable OCSP stapling on your TLS server to remove a CA roundtrip and protect user privacy
A+
DNS Records
1 A records, 79 ms lookup
PASS
1 A records, 79 ms lookup
Info::
Resolves to 1 IPv4 address(es)
Got: 52.28.236.0
Info::
Single A record — no DNS redundancy
Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.
Info::
Has 1 IPv6 (AAAA) record(s)
Got: 2a05:d014:d43:3101:94aa:a276:e035:6a2a
Info::
4 nameserver(s) configured
Got: ns-614.awsdns-12.net, ns-1903.awsdns-45.co.uk, ns-1463.awsdns-54.org, ns-209.awsdns-26.com
Info::
5 mail exchanger(s) configured
Info::
CAA records not checked
CAA record lookup requires a specialized DNS resolver. This check will be available in a future update.
Info::
SPF record present in TXT
Info::
DNS resolution time: 79 ms
Got: 79 ms
A52.28.236.0
AAAA2a05:d014:d43:3101:94aa:a276:e035:6a2a
CNAME
NSns-614.awsdns-12.net, ns-1903.awsdns-45.co.uk, ns-1463.awsdns-54.org, ns-209.awsdns-26.com
MX
1 aspmx.l.google.com
5 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com
5 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com
10 alt3.aspmx.l.google.com
10 alt4.aspmx.l.google.com
TXT
SPF v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ip4:193.8.230.0/24 ip4:52.28.236.0 ip4:3.123.190....
CAALookup not available with standard resolver
Resolved in 79 ms

Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.

Why this matters

Single A record means a single point of failure — if that IP goes down, your site is unreachable until DNS TTL expires.

Learn more

Add multiple A records for round-robin failover, or use a managed DNS provider with health-checked failover (Route 53, Cloudflare, NS1). Short TTL (60-300s) lets clients recover faster on outages.

Source: SRE practice / DNS architecture

CAA record lookup requires a specialized DNS resolver. This check will be available in a future update.

Why this matters

Informational: CAA (Certification Authority Authorization) records weren't checked in this scan.

A+
Redirect Chain
No redirects — direct access
PASS
No redirects — direct access
Info::
No redirects — direct access
Got: https://fourmilab.ch

https://fourmilab.ch

80 ms · HTTP/1.1 FINAL

#URLStatusTimeProtocolServer
1https://fourmilab.ch20080 msHTTP/1.1Apache/2.4.64 (Amazon Linux) OpenSSL/3.2.2
A+
IPv6 Readiness
IPv6 reachable (33 ms)
PASS
IPv6 reachable (33 ms)
Info::
IPv6 is configured and reachable at 2a05:d014:d43:3101:94aa:a276:e035:6a2a
Got: 33 ms connect
IPv6 Ready
AAAA Records 2a05:d014:d43:3101:94aa:a276:e035:6a2a Connection Reachable (33 ms)
A+
HTTP Probe Timing
Total 115 ms — DNS, TCP, TLS, TTFB, content transfer breakdown
PASS
DNS Lookup DNS Lookup — time to resolve the domain name to an IP address.
30 ms
TCP Connect TCP Connect — time to establish a TCP connection to the server.
27 ms
TLS Handshake TLS Handshake — time to complete the HTTPS encryption handshake.
31 ms
Time to First Byte Time to First Byte — how long the server takes to respond with the first byte of data.
115 ms
Total Time Total request time from DNS lookup through full response.
115 ms

Connection waterfall

DNS Lookup 30 ms TCP Connect 27 ms TLS Handshake 31 ms Server Processing 27 ms Content Transfer 0 ms
Domain Intelligence
Domain intelligence data not available
INFO
Domain intelligence data not available

RDAP and WHOIS lookup both failed

All checks on this page are automated. Results are estimates - run targeted manual reviews when the score affects a release decision.

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