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April 18, 2000
PRESS RELEASE
IRS and Tax-Information Web Sites Coped Well With
Last-Minute Filing Demands According to Keynote's Tax-Site
Performance Report
Note to press and analysts: Call Keynote's media and
analyst-relations hotline at (650) 522-1234 to request
additional information or an interview. To be added
to Keynote's press-release distribution list, send
an email to press@keynote.com and specify your press
affiliation.
SAN MATEO, California, April 18, 2000 - The Internal
Revenue Service and major tax-information web sites
performed well overall for online filers accessing
the home page of each site during the last week of
the 2000 tax-filing season, according to more than
160,000 measurements conducted from April 10 -17 by
Keynote (Nasdaq:KEYN), The Internet Performance Authority®.
The performance of the tax information sites during
the week ranged from 4.51 seconds at hrblock.com, with
96.0 percent availability, to 1.60 seconds at turbotax.com,
with 98.2 percent availability. The TaxCut web site
slowed by 46.8 percent from Monday through Friday the
previous week, from 2.84 to 4.17 seconds, and the H&R
Block web site slowed by 15.6 percent from 3.90 seconds
the previous week. The performance over the weekend
was slightly better than during the week, from 3.86
seconds at H&R Block, with 98.5 percent availability,
to 1.73 seconds at TurboTax, with 99.5 percent availability.
The following table shows the average performance
of the web sites of four major tax information sites,
as well as the IRS web site, as measured by Keynote
every 15 minutes from Monday, April 10 through the
tax deadline on Monday, April 17, from 5:00 a.m. until
9:00p.m. Pacific time from computers at 66 Internet
access points in 25 large metropolitan areas around
the United States. The performance numbers are the
average time in seconds required to access and download
the home page of each web site over a T-1 or T-3 Internet
connection. Lower performance numbers are better and
indicate faster performance. The table also shows the
average size in kilobytes (thousands of bytes) of the
site's home page including all of its graphics.
Keynote's Tax Site Performance Report
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Average time in seconds and % availability to download web page
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday and
Monday - Friday Sunday
April 10 - 14 April 15 - 16
------------------------------- ------- --------- ------ -----
Web Site Perf Avail (%) Perf Avail
(secs) (secs) (%)
------------------------------- ------- --------- ------ -----
H&R Block 4.51 96.0% 3.86 98.5%
www.hrblock.com
------------------------------- ------- --------- ------ -----
Internal Revenue Service 2.62 96.7% 2.09 97.6%
www.irs.gov
------------------------------- ------- --------- ------ -----
MSN Money Central Taxes 1.86 95.4% 1.77 95.4%
www.moneycentral.com/tax/home.asp
------------------------------- ------- --------- ------ -----
TaxCut 4.17 94.4% 3.53 97.5%
www.taxcut.com
------------------------------- ------- --------- ------ -----
TurboTax 1.60 98.2% 1.73 99.5%
www.turbotax.com
------------------------------- ------- --------- ------ -----
Keynote's Tax Site Performance Report
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Average time in seconds and % availability to download web page
Monday April 17
------------------------------- ------------ ---------
Web Site Perf (secs) Avail (%) Page Size
------------------------------- ------------ --------- -----------
H&R Block 4.76 98.2% 111KB
www.hrblock.com
------------------------------- ------------ --------- -----------
Internal Revenue Service 2.71 96.5% 146KB
www.irs.gov
------------------------------- ------------ --------- -----------
MSN Money Central Taxes 2.26 93.4% 55KB
www.moneycentral.com/tax/home.asp
------------------------------- ------------ --------- -----------
TaxCut 4.53 94.3% 83KB
www.taxcut.com
------------------------------- ------------ --------- -----------
TurboTax 1.86 98.4% 75KB
www.turbotax.com
------------------------------- ------------ --------- -----------
Source: Keynote Systems (www.keynote.com)
How Keynote Measured the Tax Sites
Keynote used its PerspectiveTM service to measure site
performance and availability every 15 minutes from
computers at 66 Internet access points in 25 metropolitan
locations around the United States, which are a subset
of Keynote's global network of measurement computers
in over 120 locations around the world. Final results
are based on Keynote's AccuStatTM technology, which
calculates each result as the mean of the medians
of the measurements from each measurement computer,
for maximum accuracy and statistical validity.
How Keynote Measures Quality of Service
The Keynote PerspectiveTM service profiles the complete
user experience of executing interactive multi-page
transactions, such as buying merchandise or making
a travel reservation, and downloading content, including
graphics and banner ads, from World Wide Web sites
to multiple locations around the world. The service
supports industry-standard HTTP and secure HTTPS,
the same protocols used by the Microsoft (Nasdq:MSFT)
and Netscape (Nasdaq:AOL) web browsers. The measurements
can be performed every 15 minutes around the clock
from each of Keynote's automated measurement locations,
which are connected to the Internet via T-1 or T-3
communication lines. Performance results and availability
rates for measured web sites, for a popular Site-of-the-Week
and for the Keynote Business 40 Index are available
in real time via MyKeynote software to anyone with
a web browser. Keynote Perspective also provides
daily quality-of-service summary reports by email
as well as an alarm service that notifies subscribers,
by pager or email, of outages or deteriorations in
quality of service.
About Keynote
Keynote is the largest provider of Internet performance
measurement, diagnostic and consulting services to
companies that operate e-commerce Web sites. The
company markets Keynote PerspectiveTM, Transaction
PerspectiveTM, Consumer PerspectiveTM
and Keynote
LifelineTM, global real-time services that
measure, assure and improve the quality of service
of e-commerce
Web sites around the world. The company captures
over 25 million performance measurements daily using
Keynote's global infrastructure of more than 500
measurement computers connected to the major Internet
backbones from over 120 statistically selected Internet
access locations representing 50 metropolitan areas
worldwide. Internet performance and availability
data are collected at Keynote's sophisticated operations
center and are instantly available to customers through
any Web browser.
Keynote customers include over 1000 leading
e-commerce Web sites and hosting companies including
AdForce (Nasdaq:CMGI),
Akamai (Nasdaq: AKAM), Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN),
Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI), Compaq Computer (NYSE:CPQ),
Cisco Systems
(Nasdaq:CSCO), Dell Computer (Nasdaq:DELL), Digital
Island (Nasdaq:ISLD), Digex (Nasdaq:DIGX), DoubleClick
(Nasdaq:DCLK), Global Center (Nasdaq:GBLX), Microsoft
(Nasdaq:MSFT), National Semiconductor (NYSE:NSM),
Pets.com (Nasdaq:IPET), SABRE Holdings (NYSE:TSG),
UPS (NYSE:
UPS) and WorldCom/UUNET (Nasdaq:WCOM).
Keynote is a member of the nationally-known Stanford
University Statistics Department's Industrial Affiliates
Program. Keynote works with Stanford statistics experts
within the program to help define its methodology for
measuring Web-site performance and ensure the accuracy
of its data.
For further information about Keynote, visit the Keynote
Web site at http://www.keynote.com or contact the company
at Keynote Systems, Inc., 2855 Campus Drive, San Mateo,
California 94403, telephone (650) 522-1000, fax (650)
522-1099, email info@keynote.com or call Keynote's
media and analyst-relations hotline at (650) 522-1234.
To be added to Keynote's press-release distribution
list, send an email to press@keynote.com and specify
your press affiliation.
Keynote, Perspective, Consumer Perspective, MyKeynote,
Lifeline and The Internet Performance Authority are
trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks
are the property of their respective owners. Editorial Contacts:
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote, (650) 522-1168, dberkowitz@keynote.com
Mary Lindsay, Lindsay PR, (408) 984-7242, mary@lindsaypr.com
Tracy Beaufort, Eastwick Communications, (650) 480-4028,
tracy@eastwick.com
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