Top ISPs Report
December 2000 report
We've got a new look for our ISP report, the joint venture of Network World and Visual Networks.Through statistical analysis of Visual's Internet BenchMark data for dial-up service (see How We Did It), we rank the top ISPs in the business-to-business, national and regional Isp markets, as they compare to other vendors within the same market.
The list of the following ISPs are those ISPs that outperformed the average within their metric. The ISP that is listed in bold was the top performer for that category.
How we did it
Who we tested
Top ISP archive
| Category | ||
| Evening-hour CFR%: | How often a modem call to the provider gets through successfully during the evening hours. A failure would include a busy signal, ring no answer, modem problem or login failure. The lower the call failure rate percentage, the better. | |
| National average |
Regional average |
B2B average |
| 8.2% | 3% | 8.6% |
| Top ISPs* | ||
| AT&T | Ameritech | AT&T (GNS) |
| CompuServe | BellSouth | NaviPath |
| EarthLink | PacBell | Splitrock |
| JunoWeb | SBIS | UUNET (GridNet) |
| Prodigy | XO | |
| Verizon-West | ||
| * Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification | ||
| Category | ||
| Business hour CFR%: | How often a modem call to the provider gets through successfully during weekday business hours. A failure would include a busy signal, ring no answer, modem problem or login failure. The lower the call failure rate percentage, the better. | |
| National average |
Regional average |
B2B average |
| 7.40% | 2.50% | 8.60% |
| Top ISPs* | ||
| AOL | Ameritech | AT&T (GNS) |
| AT&T | BellSouth | Genuity |
| CompuServe | PacBell | NaviPath |
| EarthLink | Qwest | PSI |
| JunoWeb | SBIS | Splitrock |
| Prodigy | Verizon-North | UUNET (GridNet) |
| Verizon-West | XO | |
| * Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification | ||
| Category | ||
| Initial modem speed (in K bit/sec): | Measurement of the negotiated connection speed to your ISP once the call has successfully gone through. | |
| National average |
Regional average |
B2B average |
| 47.67 | 48 | 48.1 |
| Top ISPs* | ||
| AOL | BellSouth | AT&T (GNS) |
| AT&T | Qwest | ICG-NetAhead |
| EarthLink | SBIS | NaviPath |
| JunoWeb | Verizon-North | UUNET (GridNet) |
| Verizon-West | XO | |
| * Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification | ||
| Category | ||
| Avg. time to logon (in seconds): | Reflects the time taken to connect and authenticate to a provider's network access server once the modem takes the line off-hook. | |
| National average |
Regional average |
B2B average |
| 29.44 | 31.33 | 30.68 |
| Top ISPs* | ||
| AT&T | Ameritech | AT&T (GNS) |
| EarthLink | PacBell | Genuity |
| JunoWeb | Verizon-North | UUNET (GridNet) |
| MindSpring | ||
| MSN | ||
| Verizon-West | ||
| * Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification | ||
| Category | ||
| Avg. DNS lookup (in milliseconds): | The time from sending the first DNS query until a successful response is received from any query. This reflects actual end user perception of the DNS resolution time, including retries. | |
| National average |
Regional average |
B2B average |
| 525.28 | 563.02 | 587.95 |
| Top ISPs* | ||
| AOL | Ameritech | Genuity |
| AT&T | RCN | PSI |
| EarthLink | SBIS | UUNET |
| Verizon-West | Verizon-North | XO |
| ZipLink | ||
| * Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification | ||
| Category | ||
| Avg. Web throughput (in K byte/sec): |
The effective transfer rate of the connection. The average of these Web throughput measurements is presented in the reports. Throughput does not necessarily reflect the actual bandwidth of the connection, but rather the effective Web throughput experienced using a connection. | |
| National average |
Regional average |
B2B average |
| 4.53 | 4.81 | 4.68 |
| Top ISPs* | ||
| AT&T | Ameritech | Genuity |
| EarthLink | BellSouth | NaviPath |
| JunoWeb | PacBell | UUNET |
| MindSpring | Qwest | UUNET (GridNet) |
| MSN | SBIS | XO |
| Prodigy | ||
| Verizon-West | ||
| * Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification | ||
| Category | ||
| Avg. download time (in seconds): |
The time taken for the complete Web page to download, including all page content. Calculated by measuring the time from the first HTTP TCP packet being sent to the server until the last HTTP TCP connection has terminated. | |
| National average |
Regional average |
B2B average |
| 25.83 | 26.76 | 28.19 |
| Top ISPs* | ||
| AOL | Ameritech | AT&T (GNS) |
| AT&T | BellSouth | Genuity |
| CompuServe | PacBell | NaviPath |
| Qwest | Splitrock | |
| SBIS | UUNET | |
| Verizon-South | ||
| * Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification | ||
| Category | ||
| Avg. total Web Fail/timeout%: | Any error message that appears as a dialog box for the Internet Explorer browser is considered a Web page failure. Any download that takes longer than 4 minutes to complete is cancelled and considered a Web page timeout. A low percentage is considered better. | |
| National average |
Regional average |
B2B average |
| 1.9% | 0.8% | 1.5% |
| Top ISPs* | ||
| AT&T | Ameritech | AT&T (GNS) |
| EarthLink | BellSouth | Genuity |
| JunoWeb | PacBell | NaviPath |
| MindSpring | Qwest | PSI |
| MSN | Splitrock | |
| Prodigy | UUNET | |
| Verizon-West | ||
| * Note: ISPs that performed above the average in the category are listed; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification | ||
Further analysis, December 2000
ISP
Analysis
National Retail
AT&T WorldNet
Outshines other ISPs in this classification in seven out of eight categories tested
Regional Retail
PacBell
Best of the bunch this time around, with strong scores in CFR% for evening hours, average Web throughput, average download time and low Web failure/timeout %
Business-to-Business
AT&T (GNS)
Strong showing in initial modem connect speed and average time to login
NaviPath (tie)
Up and comer? Good numbers in average Web throughput and average download times
The data for this report comes from Visual Networks. Through its Internet BenchMark data, Visual rates national, regional and business-to-business Internet Service Providers according to several factors, including call failure rate, modem conect speed, and Web download performance.
We took the raw data from Visual and applied statistical analysis to rate the relative performance of each ISP. We then averaged out the data for each category and list those ISPs that perform above the average for that group. If your ISP is not listed (check the list to see all the ISPs tested) for that category, it means they performed average or below for that category.
A list of all the ISPs tested, as well as an archive of previous reports, appears below.
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