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.
October 2001 report
The charts below shows you the top dial-up ISPs in the market for October 2001 and how they performed in eight metrics, as determined by eTesting Labs' Internet BenchMark data. We analyzed 21 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 October 2001 | |
| ISP | Analysis |
| National Retail | |
| AT&T WorldNet | Best ISP in six out of nine categories, above average in all categories. |
| Regional Retail | |
| BellSouth/PacBell | Too close to call, both are very strong this month |
| Business-to-Business | |
| AT&T (GNS)/McLeod USA | Another close race, great performance from both ISPs. |
Who we tested
Top ISP archive
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.
RELATED LINKS Archive of Network World Fusion Focus on Internet Services newsletters
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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 average
Regional average
B2B Average
2.96%
2.17%
1.90%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
BellSouth
AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink
PacBell
Genuity
JunoWeb
SBIS (tie)
McLeod USA
MSN
Verizon-East (tie)
Sprint
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 average
Regional average
B2B Average
3.76%
2.43%
2.10%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink
BellSouth
McLeod USA
JunoWeb
PacBell
Sprint
MSN
SBIS
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
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
3.14%
2.70%
2.70%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
BellSouth
AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink
PacBell
Genuity
MSN
SBIS
McLeod USA
Prodigy
Verizon-East
Verizon-West
Back to top* 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 average
Regional average
B2B Average
49.26
49.21
49.17
Top ISPs*
AOL
BellSouth
AT&T (GNS)
AT&T
PacBell
Genuity
CompuServe
Verizon-East
McLeod USA
Sprint
* 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
29.72
32.64
29.71
Top ISPs*
AT&T
Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink
PacBell
Genuity
JunoWeb
SBIS
Sprint
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 average
Regional average
B2B Average
470.36
1290.28
509.3
Top ISPs*
AOL
BellSouth
AT&T (GNS)
AT&T
PacBell
Genuity
EarthLink
Qwest
McLeod USA
MSN
SBIS
WorldCom
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 average
Regional average
B2B Average
4.97
5.2
5.33
Top ISPs*
AT&T
BellSouth
Genuity
Broadwing
PacBell
McLeod USA
EarthLink
Qwest
Sprint
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
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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
22.85
23.66
23.42
Top ISPs*
AOL
BellSouth
AT&T (GNS)
AT&T
PacBell
McLeod USA
CompuServe
Qwest
Sprint
* 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. 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
0.50%
0.30%
0.45%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
Ameritech
AT&T (GNS) (tie)
Broadwing
BellSouth
Sprint (tie)
Verizon-West
PacBell
Qwest
* 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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