Real user monitoring

Real user monitoring (RUM) is a passive web monitoring technology that records all user interaction with a website. Monitoring actual user interaction with a website is important to website operators to determine if users are being served quickly, error free and if not which part of a business process is failing. Software as a Service (SaaS) and Application Service Providers (ASP) use RUM to monitor and manage service quality delivered to their clients. Real user monitoring data is used to determine the actual service-level quality delivered to end-users and to detect errors or slowdowns on web sites. The data may also be used to determine if changes that are promulgated to sites has the desired effect or causes errors.

Organizations also use RUM to test website changes prior to deployment by monitoring for errors or slowdowns in the pre-deployment phase, they may also use it to test changes to production websites, or to anticipate behavioural changes in a website. For example a website may add an area where users would be likely to congregate before moving forward in a group (test takers logging into a website over twenty minutes and then simultaneously beginning a test for example), this is called "rendezvous" in test environments. Changes to websites such as these can be tested with RUM.

Real user monitoring is typically "passive monitoring," i.e. the RUM device collects web traffic without having any effect on the operation of the site. In some limited cases it also uses Javascript injected into a page to provide feedback from the browser.

Passive monitoring can be very helpful in troubleshooting performance problems once they have occurred. Passive monitoring differs from synthetic monitoring in that it relies on actual inbound and outbound web traffic to take measurements.