Growing pains: Study quantifies ISP connection rates across the U.S.

The East is faring better than the West when it comes to accessing and using the Internet, according to the results of nationwide testing done by Inverse Network Technology.

The Internet measurement and management firm, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., found that consumers and small businesses in Allentown, Pa., had fewer delays and problems than users in Phoenix during July, August and September 1997. Inverse conducted similar tests during the first and second quarters of 1997.

But taken alone, such numbers reveal very little about the capability of Internet service providers and quality of service throughout the United States, said Jennifer Bestor, vice president of research for Inverse.

"Being the best for a certain quarter is a little bit of a fluke," Bestor said. "Santa Barbara [Calif.] led the list the previous quarter. Why did it drop? That depends on a lot of factors."

The end-to-end testing of 13 national consumer ISPs was performed in 42 cities. The ISPs tested for call reliability and Web performance during a two-week period in September included America Online, AT&T WorldNet, CompuServe, Concentric Network, EarthLink Network, IBM Global Network, internetMCI, Microsoft Network, MindSpring, Netcom, Prodigy, Sprint Internet Passport and UUNet.

Key findings include:

* Call failure-the percentage of times users received busy signals, modem or other log-in problems-during the peak consumer hours of 6 p.m. to midnight stabilized over the summer, ending at 12.5% in September compared with 12.6% in June.

* Over 24 hours, call failure rates went up to 8.3% in September from 8.1% in June.

* Allentown had a call failure rate of 4.4% during a 24-hour period, making it the highest scoring city.

* During the same period, Phoenix had a call failure rate of 17.6%, making it the second quarter in a row that Phoenix scored at the bottom.

* The industry average 24-hour call failure rate is 8.3%.

"There's a lot of speculation over Phoenix," said Bestor. "A lot of the ISPs don't have people stationed in their access points there, and when a problem occurs, someone has to fly out from Los Angeles, which is an hour and a half away. So any problems could persist for three to four hours," she said.

Inverse also tested Web throughput, or the amount of time it takes to download a Web page. During September, 5% of all attempts failed on the first try, an improvement over a 6% failure rate in the second quarter and an 8% rate in the first quarter.

"People who are designing Web pages are doing a better job," said Rebecca Wetzel, a TeleChoice analyst. "The designers are getting smarter, and the servers are also improving."

While having quantitative information on the performance of the Internet is valuable, it must also be taken in context, Wetzel said.

"As of August 1997, the average size of an e-mail message was 13 kb/s; now it's 40 kb/s," she said. "And the number of messages per user has gone from three to five a day to double in January. The number of users is growing like crazy, the amount of traffic going over the backbone is increasing tremendously and the ISPs have to keep up. It's a big challenge."

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