Keynote Systems Announces Its Sites-of-the-Week for January: Four Popular Web Sites Selected for Public Internet Performance Tests

Business Wire, Jan 4, 1999

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 4, 1999--

Companies With E-Commerce Web Sites Invited to

Compare Their Quality of Service to These Benchmark Sites

Keynote Systems, the recognized authority on Internet performance, today released the identities of four popular web sites whose quality of service the company will measure in January as part of its ongoing Site-of-the-Week program that makes the performance and availability results of selected sites available free to the public on the World Wide Web at http://www.keynote.com. Companies with e-commerce web sites signing up for Keynote's free performance appraisal at http://www.keynote.com/app0104.html can also compare the performance and availability of their own sites to the Site-of-the-Week.

The web sites whose Internet performance and availability rates will be visible for public scrutiny for one week each in January as Site-of-the-Week belong to SkyMall (NASDAQ:SKYM), BabyCenter, Broadcast.com (NASDAQ:BCST) and EarthLink Network (NASDAQ:ELNK).

Anyone with a Java-enabled web browser from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) or Netscape (NASDAQ:NSCP) 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 four Sites-of-the-Week for January include the largest in-flight catalog company, an information and commerce company serving new parents, the leading aggregator and broadcaster of streaming media programming on the Web, and a large Internet access provider for individuals and businesses. -0-

Week: January 4
Company: SkyMall, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYM)
Internet Address: http://www.skymall.com
Web-Site Software: Microsoft IIS 4.0 (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Internet Access: Frontier GlobalCenter (NYSE:FRO)

Week: January 11
Company: BabyCenter, Inc.
Internet Address: http://www.babycenter.com
Web-Site Software: Netscape Enterprise 3.5.1C (NASDAQ:NSCP)
Internet Access: Frontier GlobalCenter (NYSE:FRO)

Week: January 18
Company: Broadcast.com Inc. (NASDAQ:BCST)
Internet Address: http://www.broadcast.com
Web-Site Software: Microsoft IIS 3.0 (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Internet Access: WorldCom/UUNET (NASDAQ:WCOM), Cable & Wireless
(NYSE:CWP), GTE/BBN (NYSE:GTE), AT&T (NYSE:T), and Sprint (NYSE:FON)

Week: January 25
Company: EarthLink Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ELNK)
Internet Address: http://www.earthlink.net
Web-Site Software: Netscape Enterprise 3.6 (NASDAQ:NSCP)
Internet Access: WorldCom/UUNET (NASDAQ:WCOM), Cable & Wireless
(NYSE:CWP), and Sprint (NYSE:FON)

-0-

"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 average."

Recent Sites-of-the-Week, whose performance graphs from those weeks have been published on Keynote's web site, include the web sites of Fox Entertainment Group, Inc. (NYSE:FOX), MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:MSPG), macys.com, Inc. (NYSE:FD), Network Solutions (NASDAQ:NSOL), Apple Computer (NASDAQ:AAPL), Newsweek (NYSE:WPO), Preview Travel, Inc. (NASDAQ:PTVL), Ameritrade (NASDAQ:AMTD), America Online (NYSE:AOL), Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU), and Siebel Systems (NASDAQ:SEBL).

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), the same protocol used by the Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Netscape (NASDAQ:NSCP) web browsers.

The measurements are performed every 15 minutes around the clock from each of Keynote's 68 automated measurement locations around the world which are connected to the Internet via T-1 communication lines. This produces over 45,000 discrete measurements of page downloads and availability rates each week for each of the more than 1,800 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 in real time via Keynote's Web Edition software through a Java-enabled 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/app0104.html.> The Keynote Business 40 Internet Performance Index is an industry-standard metric of the overall health and performance of the Internet that is published weekly in The Industry Standard and other leading business and trade publications. The Index comprises 40 important web sites in six categories of publishing, search engines and directories, business services, financial services, high technology and communications.