Top ISPs Report

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
3.80%	2.40%	1.60%
Top ISPs*
AT&T	Ameritech	AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink	BellSouth	Genuity
JunoWeb	PacBell	McLeod USA (tie)
MSN	SBIS	Sprint (tie)
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
3.40%	1.20%	1.90%
Top ISPs*
AT&T	Ameritech	AT&T (GNS) (tie)
EarthLink	BellSouth	Genuity
JunoWeb	SBIS	McLeod USA (tie)
MSN	Verizon-East	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

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
49.33	49.26	49.17
Top ISPs*
AT&T	BellSouth	AT&T (GNS)
Broadwing	Verizon-East	Genuity
EarthLink		McLeod USA
Verizon-West		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

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
29.7	32.5	28.91
Top ISPs*
AT&T	PacBell	AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink	SBIS	Genuity
JunoWeb	Verizon-East	McLeod USA
Prodigy		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

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
474.06	409.1	515.68
Top ISPs*
AOL	Ameritech	AT&T (GNS)
AT&T	PacBell	Genuity
Broadwing	SBIS	McLeod USA
EarthLink	Verizon-East
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

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
5.04	5.29	5.4
Top ISPs*
AT&T	BellSouth	McLeod USA
Broadwing	PacBell	Sprint
EarthLink	Qwest	XO
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

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
23.98	25.14	24.96
Top ISPs*
AOL	BellSouth	AT&T (GNS)
AT&T	PacBell	McLeod USA
CompuServe	Qwest	Sprint
	SBIS	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. 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%	0.15%	0.30%
Top ISPs*
AT&T (tie)	Ameritech	AT&T (GNS) (tie)
Broadwing	PacBell	Genuity (tie)
EarthLink	SBIS	Sprint
MSN	Verizon-East
Prodigy
Verizon-West (tie)
* Those ISPs that performed above the average in the category noted; bolded ISPs are the top performer for this metric within their respective classification