Keynote Systems Announces Its Sites-of-the-Week for August: Five E-Commerce Web Sites Selected for Public Internet Performance Tests

Business Wire, August 3, 1999

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 3, 1999--

Companies With E-Commerce Web Sites Invited to Compare Their Quality

of Service to These Benchmark Sites

Keynote Systems, the leading provider of Internet performance measurement, diagnostic and consulting services, today released the identities of five popular web sites whose quality of service the company will measure in August as part of its ongoing Site-of-the-Week program and make the results available free to the public on the World Wide Web at http://web.keynote.com.

The five web sites belong to Books-A-Million (Nasdaq:BAMM), Telebank (Nasdaq:TBFC), MP3.com (Nasdaq:MPPP), China.com (Nasdaq:CHINA) and Ultima Online, a unit of Electronic Arts (Nasdaq:ERTS). Companies with e-commerce web sites signing up for Keynote's free performance appraisal at http://www.keynote.com/newsfpa.html can also compare the performance and availability of their own sites to the Site-of-the-Week.

Anyone with a web browser can view the performance measurements and availability rates of the Site-of-the-Week in real time for the current week and compare them to the industry-standard Keynote Business 40 Index. Keynote will also publish weekly several comparative performance graphs for each Site-of-the-Week on its web site at http://www.keynote.com/measures/sotw/sotw.html.

The five Sites-of-the-Week for August are popular e-commerce sites that offer goods or services to consumers or businesses over the Internet. Books-A-Million is a retailer of books and magazines. Telebank is a branchless bank providing services exclusively over the Internet and other electronic channels. MP3.com is a leading source for digital music downloads. China.com is a portal site focused on Chinese-language audiences. Ultima Online is a popular online interactive game site and user community.

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Week: August 2
Company: Books-A-Million (Nasdaq:BAMM)
Internet Address: http://www.booksamillion.com
Web-Site Software: Apache/1.3.6 on Linux
Internet Access: Telalink

Week: August 9
Company: Telebank (Nasdaq:TBFC)
Internet Address: http://www.telebank.com
Web-Site Software: Microsoft IIS/4.0 (Nasdaq:MSFT)
Internet Access: Exodus (Nasdaq:EXDS)

Week: August 16
Company: MP3.com (Nasdaq:MPPP)
Internet Address: http://www.mp3.com
Web-Site Software: Apache/1.3.3 on FreeBSD
Internet Access: AT&T CERFnet (NYSE:T)

Week: August 23
Company: China.com
Internet Address: http://www.china.com
Web-Site Software: Netscape-Enterprise/3.5.1C  (NYSE:AOL)
Internet Access: LinkAGE, a division of PSINet (Nasdaq:PSIX)

Week: August 30
Company: Ultima Online
Internet Address: http://www.owo.com
Web-Site Software: Apache/1.3.6 on Sun Solaris (Nasdaq:SUNW)
Internet Access: IXC Internet and Sprint (NYSE:FON)

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"The quality of service of popular Internet web sites varies over time and users' geography," said Umang Gupta, chairman and CEO of Keynote Systems. "In conjunction with our subscription service that delivers comparative Internet performance and availability data to our corporate customers, we're pleased to provide a public service each week by highlighting a popular web site and allowing anyone to compare its quality of service to an industry-standard benchmark."

Recent Sites-of-the-Week, whose performance graphs from those weeks have been published on Keynote's web site, include the web sites of E-LOAN (Nasdaq:EELN), Ask Jeeves (Nasdaq:ASKJ), Office Depot (NYSE:ODP), Drugstore.com (Nasdaq:DSCM), Staples (Nasdaq:SPLS), uBid (Nasdaq:UBID), Discover Brokerage (NYSE:MWD), Sears (NYSE:S), 1-800-Flowers, Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE:WMT), AboveNet Communications (Nasdaq:ABOV), and Autoweb.com (Nasdaq:AWEB).

How Keynote Measures Quality of Service

To determine quality of service for its Site-of-the-Week, Keynote Systems uses its Keynote Perspective(TM) service to measure how long it takes to access and download web pages and their components via industry-standard HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) or secure HTTPS, the same protocols used by the Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and Netscape (NYSE:AOL) web browsers.

The measurements are performed every 15 minutes around the clock from each of Keynote's 84 automated measurement locations around the world which are connected to the Internet via T-1 communication lines. This produces over 56,000 discrete measurements of page downloads and availability rates each week for each of the more than 3,000 web sites whose quality of service Keynote measures for its customers.

Performance results and availability rates for the Site-of-the-Week and for the Keynote Business 40 Index are available on the Internet in real time to anyone with a web browser.

Keynote also offers a free one-week comparative web-site performance appraisal against the Site-of-the-Week and the Keynote Business 40 Index, with its Keynote Perspective service, to any company that develops or operates a business web site with a registered domain name and submits an application online at http://www.keynote.com/newsfpa.html.