I'm not sure about the method, but it sends the data to collector.newrelic.com and collector0 through 8., pretty much the whole thing was completely automatic and zero configuration except for double clicking the installer exe.
By default, data is transmitted in the clear from your site to our site. There is an option flag (ssl) in the newrelic.yml file to enable the use of HTTPS. We don't do host authentication with HTTPS, just communication encryption.
Under Java, .NET and PHP we use JSON to serialize data. The Ruby agent uses Ruby marshaling to send data to New Relic and we marshal return codes back. We believe the risk exposure from marshaling is low.
The Agent communicates with two hosts: collector.newrelic.com and one of collector[0-8].newrelic.com, where the numbered host is fixed for your account. Which numbered host your account uses is displayed in the log/newrelic_agent.log at startup.
Sounds great! But still, I'd love some more information before installing this on production. Thanks anyways for the pointer, hadn't come across them before!
Edit, actually here we go (about 1/2 way down):
http://support.newrelic.com/help/kb/docs/security
By default, data is transmitted in the clear from your site to our site. There is an option flag (ssl) in the newrelic.yml file to enable the use of HTTPS. We don't do host authentication with HTTPS, just communication encryption.
Under Java, .NET and PHP we use JSON to serialize data. The Ruby agent uses Ruby marshaling to send data to New Relic and we marshal return codes back. We believe the risk exposure from marshaling is low.
The Agent communicates with two hosts: collector.newrelic.com and one of collector[0-8].newrelic.com, where the numbered host is fixed for your account. Which numbered host your account uses is displayed in the log/newrelic_agent.log at startup.