Feature /
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.
December 2001 report
The charts below show you the top dial-up ISPs in the market for December 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 December 2001 | |
| ISP | Analysis |
| National Retail | |
| AT&T WorldNet | Wins in a squeaker, with a strong EarthLink in a close, close second. |
| Regional Retail | |
| SBC Pacific Bell | Very strong showing in key categories make this a winner. |
| Business-to-Business | |
| McLeod USA | Very good overall performance in all categories. |
Who we tested
Top ISP archive
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
4.40%
2.20%
1.80%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
SBC Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink
BellSouth
Genuity
JunoWeb
SBC Pacific Bell
McLeod USA
MSN
SBC Southwestern Bell
Sprint
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
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
5.10%
2.60%
1.70%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
SBC Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink
BellSouth
Genuity
JunoWeb
SBC Pacific Bell
McLeod USA
MSN
SBC Southwestern Bell
Sprint
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
5.70%
4.80%
2.90%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
SBC Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink
BellSouth
McLeod USA
JunoWeb
SBC Southwestern Bell
Sprint
MSN
Verizon-East
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
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
49.07
49.06
49.07
Top ISPs*
AT&T
BellSouth
AT&T (GNS)
Broadwing
SBC Pacific Bell
Genuity
Prodigy
Qwest
McLeod USA
Verizon-West
Verizon-East
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
30.26
31.06
28.61
Top ISPs*
AT&T
SBC Ameritech
AT&T (GNS)
EarthLink
BellSouth
Genuity
JunoWeb
SBC Southwestern Bell
McLeod USA
MSN
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
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
501.72
436.1
600.82
Top ISPs*
AOL
SBC Pacific Bell
AT&T (GNS)
AT&T
Qwest
Genuity
Broadwing
SBC Southwestern Bell
McLeod USA
EarthLink
WorldCom
MSN
Prodigy
* 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
4.97
5.14
5.36
Top ISPs*
AT&T
BellSouth
McLeod USA
Broadwing
SBC Pacific Bell
Sprint
EarthLink
SBC Southwestern Bell
JunoWeb
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
25.57
27.6
26.41
Top ISPs*
AOL
BellSouth
AT&T (GNS)
CompuServe
SBC Pacific Bell
McLeod USA
SBC Southwestern Bell
Sprint
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
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
0.30%
1.10%
0.40%
Top ISPs*
AT&T
BellSouth (tie)
AT&T (GNS) (tie)
Broadwing
SBC Pacific Bell (tie)
McLeod USA
EarthLink
SBC Southwestern Bell
Sprint (tie)
MSN
Verizon-East
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
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 ISP). 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.
(back to top)
