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WAN Services /

Top ISPs Report

A joint venture of Network World and eTesting Labs.

June 2001 report

Is your ISP measuring up? Find out with our Top ISP Report. The data below is for June 2001. Check back each month for the latest data.

The chart below shows you the top dial-up ISPs in the market, and how they performed in eight metrics, as determined by eTesting Labs' Internet BenchMark data. We analyzed 23 ISPs; if your ISP isn't listed among the top performers, go ask them why they're not performing as well as their competitors.




TOP ISPs for the month, June 2001
ISP Analysis
National Retail
AT&T WorldNet Chinks in the armor? AT&T barely tops a strong-charging Verizon West.
Regional Retail
BellSouth A solid performer, but PacBell is close in second; this market always has mixed results, so check specific categories closely.
Business-to-Business
Worldcom (GridNet) A new top dog for this month, the best performer in seven out of nine categories tested.



Category
24-hour CFR% Reflects how often a modem call to the provider gets through successfully over a 24-hour period. 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
2.70% 1.50% 2.20%
Top ISPs*
AT&T Ameritech Genuity
EarthLink BellSouth McLeod USA
JunoWeb RCN Worldcom
MSN   Worldcom (GridNet)
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; two bolded ISPs indicates a tie

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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
3.20% 1.60% 2.50%
Top ISPs*
AT&T Ameritech AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink BellSouth McLeod USA
JunoWeb Qwest Worldcom
MSN RCN Worldcom (GridNet)
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; two bolded ISPs indicates a tie

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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
2.50% 2.60% 2.10%
Top ISPs*
AT&T Ameritech AT&T (GNS)
Broadwing BellSouth Genuity
EarthLink RCN NaviPath
MSN SBIS Worldcom
Verizon-West   Worldcom (GridNet)
* Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification; two bolded ISPs indicates a tie

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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
48.18 47.88 47.7
Top ISPs*
AOL BellSouth AT&T (GNS)
AT&T PacBell Worldcom
Broadwing Qwest Worldcom (GridNet)
CompuServe RCN  
EarthLink    
JunoWeb    
* Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification

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Category
Avg. time to login (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 31.41 28.98
Top ISPs*
AT&T Ameritech AT&T (GNS)
Broadwing PacBell Genuity
EarthLink RCN Worldcom (GridNet)
JunoWeb SBIS  
MSN    
* Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification; two bolded ISPs indicates a tie

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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
500.75 499.26 586.53
Top ISPs*
AOL PacBell Genuity
AT&T Qwest McLeod USA
EarthLink RCN Worldcom
Prodigy Verizon-East 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; two bolded ISPs indicates a tie

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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
4.78 5.03 5.13
Top ISPs*
AT&T PacBell Genuity
Broadwing Qwest McLeod USA
EarthLink SBIS Worldcom (GridNet)
JunoWeb   XO
MSN    
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; two bolded ISPs indicates a tie

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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
24.42 25.27 24.97
Top ISPs*
AOL BellSouth AT&T (GNS)
AT&T PacBell Worldcom (GridNet)
Broadwing Qwest XO
EarthLink    
* Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification

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Avg. total Web Fail/timeout%
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 % is considered better.
National average Regional average B2B average
0.40% 0.40% 0.60%
Top ISPs*
AT&T BellSouth AT&T (GNS)
Broadwing PacBell Genuity
EarthLink SBIS McLeod USA
JunoWeb Verizon-East NaviPath
MSN   Worldcom
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

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How we did it

Our data comes from eTesting Labs and its Internet BenchMark division. Network World takes the data and applies statistical analysis to rate the relative performance of each ISPs compared to the other ISPs within the same market classification (national, regional or business-to-business ISP). Based on that analysis, we rank the top ISPs for the month listed. The chart at right lists the top three ISPs that perform above the average for the metric listed within that classification.

A list of all the ISPs tested, as well as an archive of previous reports, appears below.

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ISP report archive:

Top ISPs, 07/01/02
Top ISPs, 06/10/02
Top ISPs, 04/01/02
Top ISPs, 03/04/02
Top ISPs, 02/04/02
Top ISPs, 12/31/01
Top ISPs, 12/10/01
Top ISPs, 11/05/01
Top ISPs, 10/01/01
Top ISPs, 09/03/01
Top ISPs, 07/30/01
Top ISPs, 07/02/01
Top ISPs, 05/28/01
Top ISPs, 04/30/01
Top ISPs, 04/02/01
Top ISPs, 03/05/01
Top ISPs, 01/29/01
Top ISPs, 12/25/00
Top ISPs, 12/04/00
Top ISPs, 10/23/00
Top ISPs, 09/25/00
Top ISPs, 08/28/00
Top ISPs, 07/24/00
Top ISPs, 06/26/00
Top ISPs, 05/29/00
Top ISPs, 04/17/00
Top ISPs, 01/31/00

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Who we tested

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