Top ISPs Report
Is your ISP measuring up? Find out with our Top ISP Report, a joint venture between Network World and eTesting Labs' Internet BenchMark service. The data will be updated monthly.
August 2001 report
The charts below outline the top dial-up ISPs in the market for August 2001 and how they performed in nine metrics, as determined by eTesting Labs' Internet BenchMark data. We analyzed 22 ISPs (click here for the list); 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 August 2001 | |
| ISP | Analysis |
| National Retail | |
| AT&T WorldNet | Another win for AT&T WorldNet. That makes 20 months of domination at the top spot in this market. |
| Regional Retail | |
| Ameritech | Pulls away a bit from 2nd place BellSouth. Strong performance in certain categories. |
| Business-to-Business | |
| AT&T (GNS) | Two in a row for AT&T (GNS), with McLeod USA close behind. |
Who we tested
Top ISP archive
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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
averageRegional
averageB2B
average
2.73%
1.98%
2.05%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink
BellSouth
Genuity
JunoWeb
Verizon-East
McLeod USA
MSN
WorldCom
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
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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
averageRegional
averageB2B
average
3.07%
2.53%
2.00%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
Ameritech
Genuity
EarthLink
BellSouth
McLeod USA
JunoWeb
PacBell
WorldCom
MSN
RCN
Prodigy
SBIS
Verizon-West
Verizon-East
* 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
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
averageRegional
averageB2B
average
3.41%
2.07%
3.05%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
JunoWeb
BellSouth
Genuity
MSN
RCN
McLeod USA
Prodigy
Verizon-East
WorldCom
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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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
averageRegional
averageB2B
average
48.05
47.83
47.76
Top ISPs*
AOL
Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
AT&T
BellSouth
NaviPath
Broadwing
Qwest
WorldCom
CompuServe
RCN
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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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
averageRegional
averageB2B
average
29.62
31.6
29.94
Top ISPs*
AT&T
Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink
PacBell
Genuity
JunoWeb
RCN
NaviPath
MSN
SBIS
WorldCom
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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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
averageRegional
averageB2B
average
490.59
519.11
574.73
Top ISPs*
AOL
Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
AT&T
Qwest
Genuity
Broadwing
RCN
McLeod USA
MSN
SBIS
NaviPath
Prodigy
Verizon-East
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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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
averageRegional
averageB2B
average
4.84
4.95
5.11
AT&T
BellSouth
AT&T (GNS)
Broadwing (tie)
PacBell
McLeod USA
EarthLink
Qwest
JunoWeb
SBIS
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
averageRegional
averageB2B
average
24.9
27.03
26.07
Top ISPs*
AOL
BellSouth
AT&T (GNS)
AT&T
PacBell
McLeod USA
Broadwing
Qwest
NaviPath
CompuServe
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
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Category
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
averageRegional
averageB2B
average
0.62%
0.61%
0.48%
Top ISPs*
AT&T (tie)
Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
Broadwing (tie)
BellSouth
McLeod USA
JunoWeb (tie)
PacBell
WorldCom
Prodigy (tie)
SBIS
EarthLink
Verizon-East
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
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 ISP compared to the other ISPs within the same market classification (national, regional or business-to-business). Based on that analysis, we rank the top ISPs for the month listed. The chart above 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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