Press Releases - March 09, 2000 Pres. Candidates Bush and Gore Win in Internet Performance Duel

Presidential Candidates Bush and Gore Win in Super Tuesday Internet Performance Duel According to Keynote

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San Mateo, California, March 9, 2000 The official web site of the George W. Bush campaign beat the performance of the other presidential candidates, web sites by 45 percent, averaging 1.69 seconds, on Super Tuesday primary day according to more than 25,000 measurements conducted around the United States by Keynote (Nasdaq:KEYN), the Internet performance authorityTM. The web site of Al Gore finished in second place, with a nationwide average of 3.06 seconds, although it beat the Bush site in New York with an average .92 seconds compared to Bush's 1.37 seconds.

The following table shows the national performance of the web sites of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates as measured by Keynote every 15 minutes on Super Tuesday, March 7 from 12:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. Pacific time from computers at 66 Internet access points in 25 large metropolitan areas around the United States. California measurements were taken from San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, while New York measurements were taken from New York City. The table indicates 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 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 the graphics and photographs.

Keynote's Super Tuesday Internet Performance Duel


	Time in seconds to download candidate's web page


	Official Web Site

	George W. Bush

	Al Gore

	John McCain

	Alan Keyes

	Bill Bradley


	National

	1.69

	3.06

	3.94

	5.34

	7.20


	California

	1.37

	3.30

	5.11

	4.00

	8.75


	New York

	1.37

	.92

	2.68

	5.03

	5.44


	Size of Home Page

	44 KB

	194 KB

	76 KB

	68 KB

	91 KB


	Source: Keynote Systems (www.keynote.com)

According to public information sources, the official web sites of the presidential candidates run a variety of server software and connect to the Internet via different access providers.

Candidate: George W. Bush
Internet Address: www.georgewbush.com
Web-Site Software: Microsoft-IIS/4.0 (Nasdaq:MSFT)
Internet Access or Hosting: Exodus Communications (Nasdaq:EXDS) in Austin, Texas

Candidate: Al Gore
Internet Address: www.algore2000.com
Web-Site Software: Apache/1.3.9 on Linux (Nasdaq:RHAT)
Internet Access or Hosting: Exodus Communications in Sterling, Virginia

Candidate: John McCain
Internet Address: www.mccain2000.com
Web-Site Software: Netscape-Enterprise/4.0 on Sun Solaris
Internet Access or Hosting: US West (NYSE:USW) in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Candidate: Alan Keyes
Internet Address: www.keyes2000.org
Web-Site Software: Apache/1.3.9 on Sun Solaris
Internet Access or Hosting: SimpleNet (a unit of Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO)) in San Diego, California

Candidate: Bill Bradley
Internet Address: www.billbradley.com
Web-Site Software: Apache/1.3.9 on Sun Solaris (Nasdaq:SUNW)
Internet Access or Hosting: Shore.Net in Lynn, Massachusetts

How Keynote Measured the Presidential Candidate Web Sites
Keynote used its PerspectiveTM service to measure the performance and availability of the official web sites of the presidential candidates 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. Keynote will continue the measurements through November 2000 and periodically report the results as a public service.

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.