Press Room: 2002
Keynote and Boardwatch Publish Industry's First Full-Fledged Ranking of Pure Backbone Performance
AT&T, XO Communications and Cable & Wireless Top the List in Month-Long Study
Results to be Presented in Keynote Session at Service Networks 2002 Conference
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SAN MATEO, Calif., — May 14, 2002 — Keynote Systems, (Nasdaq:KEYN), the Internet Performance Authority®, and Boardwatch Magazine have produced the industry's first full-fledged ranking of pure backbone performance, which serves as a comparative shopping guide for organizations evaluating Internet backbone services and ISPs purchasing backbone bandwidth.
The Boardwatch/Keynote Backbone Testing Study, published in the May, 2002 edition of the Boardwatch Buyer's Guide and Backbone Directory, is the latest in a series of regularly published ISP performance surveys produced by Keynote and Boardwatch since April of 1997, that previously evaluated backbone Web hosting and became the recognized benchmark for hosting performance. The new study departs significantly from its predecessors by eliminating Web hosting factors to create instead a new industry measure focusing on pure backbone performance.
The Boardwatch/Keynote Backbone Testing Study focuses on the core transport performance of 31 major backbones. Based on over four million measurements taken over one month, this full-fledged industry study implements some refinements in measurement and reporting following a pilot study, published by Boardwatch in the Spring of 2002; and measures an expanded number of providers over an extended period of time compared to the pilot. The May study presents performance groups based on the geometric mean performance of network round-trip delay. Within each group, providers are ranked by performance variability.
AT&T, XO Communications and Cable & Wireless top the list as the fastest providers in the May study, with geometric mean average performance in the range of 0.03 seconds. The slowest, McLeodUSA and Touch America, average 0.07 and 0.08 seconds respectively.
The results of the Boardwatch/Keynote Backbone Testing Study will be presented in a keynote session at the Service Networks 2002 Spring conference in Baltimore, May 21-23, by the co-authors of the study: Eric Siegel, principal Internet consultant with Keynote Systems and David Kopf, editorial director of Boardwatch Magazine. The presentation will include discussion with some of the providers included in the study.
"With this latest study and our refinements in methodology and reporting for maximum accuracy, Keynote and Boardwatch have achieved a more absolute measure of backbone performance," said Siegel. "The results of this study represent an accurate assessment of pure backbone performance, and should be a useful guide for those evaluating backbone services. We appreciate the cooperation of the ISP community in this effort, and invite continued comments."
"Boardwatch and Keynote have been working towards this level of pure performance accuracy for several years," said Kopf. "Ever since Boardwatch and Keynote teamed up to produce the ISP Index, there has been keen interest for a study of pure backbone performance. We have achieved the first such survey in the industry. We're giving end-users even more reliable data to make ISP and bandwidth decisions."
About the Boardwatch/Keynote Backbone Testing Study
In order to most accurately represent pure Internet round-trip time, results of the Boardwatch/Keynote Backbone Testing Study are based only on the time required to open a TCP connection to the selected file on a single Web server, which involves no applications overhead and eliminates the complexities introduced by distributed server technologies. Measurements were taken over high-bandwidth, non-congested links to represent the true end-user experience on well-maintained corporate connections, and eliminate the effect of a slow last mile.
The backbone providers in the study are ranked in performance groups according to geometric mean results. This study excluded errors that close examination deemed to be the result of uncharacteristic failure: single episodes during which the test files were unavailable and considered undetectable by customers, when all other measurements were normal. With these errors excluded, all of the providers had error rates below 0.5 percent. The average error rate for all measurements taken (about four million) was approximately 0.2 percent. The best error rates, approximately 0.1 percent, were for XO Communications and Qwest Communications.
The providers included in the study are: Aleron, Ardent, AT&T, Broadwing, Cable and Wireless, Cogent, e.Spire, Fiber Network Solutions, Genuity, Global Crossing, Globix, ICCX, ICG, IDT, Infonet Services, Intermedia, Level3, Lightning Internet, McLeod USA, Metromedia Fiber Network/Abovenet, One Call, Optigate, PSInet, Qwest, Savvis, Sprint, Touch America, Verio, Williams, WorldCom, and XO.
The backbone study is based on over four million measurements, taken every 15 minutes from 53 of Keynote's automated measurement computer links to the 10 leading end-user ISPs in the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. between February 9 and March 7, 2002. The full results are available from Boardwatch, published in its Buyer's Guide and Backbone Directory.
About Boardwatch Magazine and Penton Media
Boardwatch Magazine, the leading publication for communications service providers, reports on all aspects of the market, delivering practical and timely information for the technology, regulatory and business sides of the service provider market. Effective January 2002, Boardwatch will increase its circulation by 67%, reaching 50,000 qualified subscribers throughout North America. Visit Boardwatch Magazine online at www.ispworld.com.
Penton Media (NYSE: PME) is a leading, global business-to-business media company that produces market-focused magazines, trade shows and conferences, and Web sites. Penton's integrated media portfolio serves the following industries: Internet/broadband; information technology; electronics; natural products; food/retail; manufacturing; design/engineering; supply chain; aviation; government/compliance; mechanical systems/construction; and leisure/hospitality. For more information, visit www.penton.com.
About Keynote
Keynote Systems (Nasdaq "KEYN"), The Internet Performance Authority®, is the worldwide leader in Internet performance management services that improve the quality of e-business. Keynote's services enable corporate enterprises to benchmark, diagnose, test and manage their e-business systems both inside and outside the firewall. More than 2,400 corporate IT departments and 19,000 individual subscribers rely on the company's easy-to-use and cost-effective services to optimize revenues and reduce downtime costs without requiring additional complex and costly software implementations.
Keynote Systems, Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California. The company can be reached at www.keynote.com or by phone in the U.S. at 650-403-2400.
© 2002 Keynote Systems. The Internet Performance Authority is a registered trademark. Data Pulse and SNMP Adapter are trademarks of Keynote in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Editorial Contacts:
Mary Lindsay, Lindsay PR, (408) 984-7242, mary@lindsaypr.com
Randy Goldner, Publisher Boardwatch Magazine, ISPworld, (303) 374-9535, rgoldner@penton.com
