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

Business Wire, May 4, 1999

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 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 five popular web sites whose quality of service the company will measure in May 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 1-800-Flowers, Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE:WMT), AboveNet Communications (Nasdaq:ABOV), Autoweb.com (Nasdaq:AWEB) and Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT). 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 May are popular e-commerce sites that sell goods or services to consumers or businesses over the Internet. 1-800-Flowers is a large retail florist focused on telephone and Internet sales. Wal-Mart operates discount department stores, warehouse membership clubs and supermarkets. AboveNet provides high-performance managed co-location and Internet connectivity services. Autoweb.com is a leading consumer automotive Internet service. Caterpillar manufactures and markets earth-moving and other heavy-duty equipment. -0-

Week: May 3
Company: 1-800-Flowers
Internet Address: http://www.1800flowers.com
Web-Site Software: Microsoft IIS/3.0 (Nasdaq:MSFT)
Internet Access: MCI WorldCom/ANS (Nasdaq:WCOM)

Week: May 10
Company: Wal-Mart Stores
Internet Address: http://www.wal-mart.com
Web-Site Software: Netscape Enterprise 3.6 (NYSE:AOL)
 on HP-UX (NYSE:HWP)
Internet Access: AT&T (NYSE:T)

Week: May 17
Company: AboveNet Communications
Internet Address: http://www.above.net
Web-Site Software: Apache 1.3b3 on NetBSD/OpenBSD
Internet Access: AboveNet (Nasdaq:ABOV)

Week: May 24
Company: Autoweb.com
Internet Address: http://www.autoweb.com
Web-Site Software: Microsoft IIS/4.0 (Nasdaq:MSFT)
Internet Access: MCI WorldCom/UUNET (Nasdaq:WCOM)

Week: May 31
Company: Caterpillar
Internet Address: http://www.caterpillar.com
Web-Site Software: Netscape Enterprise 3.5.1G (NYSE:AOL)
 on HP-UX (NYSE:HWP)
Internet Access: AT&T (NYSE:T)

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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 MotherNature.com, National Discount Brokers (NYSE:NDB), VerticalNet (Nasdaq:VERT), US Airways (NYSE:U), The Sharper Image (Nasdaq:SHRP), Priceline.com (Nasdaq:PCLN), Victoria's Secret, a division of Intimate Brands (NYSE:IBI), SkyMall (Nasdaq:SKYM), Broadcast.com (Nasdaq:BCST) and Network Solutions (Nasdaq:NSOL).

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 and Netscape web browsers.

The measurements are performed every 15 minutes around the clock from each of Keynote's 72 automated measurement locations around the world which are connected to the Internet via T-1 communication lines. This produces over 48,000 discrete measurements of page downloads and availability rates each week for each of the more than 2,000 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.> The Keynote Business 40 Index is an industry-standard metric and benchmark 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.