InformationWeek

Wide Variations Found In ISP Performance

By Tom Davey

study of download times on the Web finds wide variations among Internet service providers, and se veral of the most prominent ISPs received mediocre-to-poor ratings. But critics question the methodology used. The study, to appear in the July issue of Boardwatch magazine, used computer "agents" at 35 sites in 27 cities to download 50-Kbyte files from the Web sites of 29 large ISPs. The downloads, through T1 lines, took place every 15 minutes round-the-clock for a month.

MCI ranked about average, IBM took nearly twice as long as the average, and CompuServe was fastest at nearly four times less than the average. But Robert Hagens, MCI's director of Internet engineering, says the results may reflect the speed of the ISPs' Web servers more than the performance of their networks or of the separate Web sites they host. "We might have a slow Web site," he says. "But it doesn't mean we have a slow backbone."

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