I had been wondering about monitoring web response time, like 
keynote & other services.  In searching the BB archives I found
someone had suggested using time with wget.  The only problem I
found with this is that wget does not do parallel gets which I 
can live with.

Here is how I adapted it into big brother:

It works off a wwwtime:// option in the bb-hosts:
example bb-hosts:
  216.103.214.55 www.dmzs.com # http://www.dmzs.com/ wwwtime://www.dmzs.com/

#---------------------
I added the following to bbdef.sh:
bbdef.sh:
  #
  # DMZ New Web time response testing
  #
  TIME="/usr/bin/time --format=%E"
  WGET="/usr/bin/wget --no-parent -t 1 -T 15 -r -l1 -A.gif -A.jpg -A.png"
  #MAXTIME is HOUR(1D):SECONDS(2D).MICROSECONDS(2D) 
  #where D is number of digits, so 01500 is 15 seconds
  MAXTIME="01500"

  export TIME WGET MAXTIME

#---------------------
And Added MKDIR to bbsys.sh:
  MKDIR="/bin/mkdir -p"                   # DMZ wwwtime

## Note: (don't forget to add MKDIR to the export line):
  export PING LS MKDIR FIND TOUCH CAT GREP SORT UNIQ DATE TAIL SED UPTIME WC WHO RM EXPR

#---------------------
And finally, I added the following to bin/bb-network.sh right before http* )
bb-network.sh:

#
# DMZ 0.1 - www time response testing 20010211
# dmz@dmzs.com
#
	wwwtime* ) #echo "DOING WWW Time Response Test..."
		OLDIFS=$IFS
		IFS='|'
		set $1
		IFS=$OLDIFS
		URLS=$*    
		COLOR="green"
		LINE="Server Response Time OK"
		for URL in $URLS
		do
			#echo $URL
			DOMAIN=`echo $URL | sed 's/wwwtime:\/\///'`
			LOGFILE="$BBTMP/$DOMAIN/wget.log"          
			# In case they have subdirs they are checking, wget needs to have base path setup
			$MKDIR $BBTMP/$DOMAIN            
			$TIME -o $BBTMP/$DOMAIN/.time $WGET -P $BBTMP/$DOMAIN/ -o $LOGFILE http://$DOMAIN 2>&1
			read RESPONSETIME < $BBTMP/$DOMAIN/.time
			RTIME=`echo $RESPONSETIME | sed 's/\.//' | sed 's/://'`
			if [ $RTIME -gt $MAXTIME ]
			then
				# If Not OK, check again to be sure
				$RM -fr $BBTMP/$DOMAIN
				$MKDIR $BBTMP/$DOMAIN
				$TIME -o $BBTMP/$DOMAIN/.time $WGET -P $BBTMP/$DOMAIN/ -o $LOGFILE http://$DOMAIN 2>&1
				read RESPONSETIME < $BBTMP/$DOMAIN/.time
				RTIME=`echo $RESPONSETIME | sed 's/\.//' | sed 's/://'`
				if [ $RTIME -gt $MAXTIME ]
				then
					COLOR="red"
					LINE="Server Response **NOT** OK"
				fi
			fi
			LINE="${LINE} &$COLOR $URL - Responsetime: $RESPONSETIME<hr><pre>`cat $LOGFILE`</pre>"
		done          
		$BB $BBDISP "status ${MACHINE}.wwwtime $COLOR `date` $LINE"
		$RM -fr $BBTMP/$DOMAIN
		;;


#---------------------

Let me know if anyone has alternatives or problems.
dmz