Would this mean infrastructure is stable, but doesn't necessarily mean services are up?
How I understand it, Apple's servers could be connected, but not serving requests. You can ping a server without having to ask for anything. You get a notice saying it's there, connected, and functional, but if the programming is turned off, when you send a PHP request it will poop out.
Just like how you can have a printer connected to the computer and recognized, yet when you go to print it does crap-all.
Am I right in my assessment on how this site works?
You may be right, but I don't know for certain. I believe what Pingdom does is collects outage data, and displays it on a map. I don't think they do any deeper dive than that.
Would this mean infrastructure is stable, but doesn't necessarily mean services are up?
How I understand it, Apple's servers could be connected, but not serving requests. You can ping a server without having to ask for anything. You get a notice saying it's there, connected, and functional, but if the programming is turned off, when you send a PHP request it will poop out.
Just like how you can have a printer connected to the computer and recognized, yet when you go to print it does crap-all.
Am I right in my assessment on how this site works?
You may be right, but I don't know for certain. I believe what Pingdom does is collects outage data, and displays it on a map. I don't think they do any deeper dive than that.