Do You Trust Your Host's Uptime Stats?

So do you trust your host's uptime stats or go for the third-party source to get reliable figures about your site's uptime?
I heard some hosts may even hard-coded their uptime stats tool not to let people know about downtime.

Personally I use my own server so the uptime command is always correct :)

Now regarding uptime it is not that good to have for example 3 years uptime because this means that for 3 years you haven't updated the kernel :)

You can try external uptime services, often a 15 or 30 minute check (for one site) is provided for free

External for sure - Don't all the webhosts *say* they have 99.99% uptime?  LOL - I agree with Olaf - use a service like <snipp /> - It's free and will give you the true uptime.

Don't trust those guys.


edit:

don't post your links here

sometimes the stats look spot on other times they are way off I do not take them too seriously

Uptime depends on many factors, keeping a server online is is easy part. Much more often a netwerk has problems...

Right, it depends on DC itself.

It really depends on what they consider uptime. Some hosts consider their servers still being up as long as they are pingable. However, I have had many servers completely lock up and still respond to pings. So all the sites will be down, yet uptime stats say the server is still online

yes right or they are just slow and don't serve a web page in a short time... I remember me dreamhost, I tried them over 2,5 month some time ago. Never had a slow host like them