Ranking Internet Service Providers

ThePlanet.com Popularity Grew ~200%

2008-11-28T04:57:00.000-08:00

Successful online business depends on website load time and availability. Website uptime and performance monitoring reveals end user experience with the websites; the later factors to the server performance (other reasons apply as well). Therefore, quality of hosting services are important while choosing an ISP.

ISP ranking based on real time http monitoring results of hosted websites and web applications was discussed early this year in Best Hosting Providers in 2007: Mon.itor.Us Statistics. Ranking criteria were uptime, performance and popularity. Among the three, popularity is considered of greater importance, since it also shows reliability and higher customer satisfaction.

Below is the table of 20 popular service providers shown in the post above. ThePlanet.com is number 2 with 979 active tests on Mon.itor.Us.

More into popularity aspect another post was published about ISP migrations, where among top 20 migrations ThePlanet.com received highest number of migrations (176 new tests moved from Everyone Internet, Net Access Corporation, PoundHost Internet Services and FortressITX to ThePlanet.com).

Mon.itor.Us October statistics brings another insight into ISP popularity. ThePlanet.com shows almost 200% growth in number of tests monitored (1838 tests now!), followed by New Dream Network (80%) and GoDaddy (65%). Eveyone Internet experienced a slight decrease (-15%), while Layered Technology, Net Access Corporation, Media Temple, HostDime.com, Hostdepartment.com are no longer in the top 20.

Interesting to observe that popular ISPs also show reliable performance according to monitoring results from Europe and US.

Is Cheap Hosting Really Cheap?

2008-10-27T04:42:00.000-07:00

Web site uptime is a very important aspect of improving companies' bottom line.

Internet usage increases and bandwidth is becoming an important issue because of the high load on the infrastructure. Having a fast loading website will be more and more imperative to be successful in the market. Financial gains and sustainability of the web services depend on web customer experience in the first place.

Hosting becomes a commodity

Many try to decrease hosting budgets. Scary Truth about Cheap Hosting and the Hidden Costs you Never Know Until its too Late says cheap hosting budget typically ranges from $2.75-$3.50. But how much the does "cheap" really cost? According to the post above the possibility of getting low customer satisfactions increases because of slow services.
Cheap hosting services result in:

Increased Website Downtime
Poor Server Response
Very Attractive To Spammers
Susceptible To Search Engine Ban
Lack of Customer Support
Fly-By-Night Risk
Exposure To Infections (Viruses, Trojans etc.)

Loosing customer loyalty

Deteriorated Web visitors' experience is highly negative on business bottom line. How many times is it possible to impact a customer and make the first positive impression? With the speed at which internet and businesses evolve, slow page load time and downtime is equivalent to:

Lost sales
Decrease web popularity and SERPs ranking
Increase pay per click cost

How one would know to reduce the load time?

Proactive website monitoring from different geographic locations shows the record of web site load time and performance to start with before making efforts to correct the problem. It will measure end users experience and alert you in case of problems.

September 2008 ISP Ranking

Mon.itor.Us network provides statistics to analyze Hosting companies' performance from Europe and the USA, based on more than 130,000 web sites (http tests) and 20 million checks per month. Tables below represent the hosting companies with 99% uptime in September 2008. Response times are in the 3rd column. The data is derived from real time monitoring of the web sites hosted on their servers. Number of sites shown in the last column.

Click on images to enlarge.

Thus choosing a reliable and high performance hosting provider is cost saving. Cheap is not always economical.

ThePlanet.com Lost 54, Received 176 Tests from 20 selected

2008-09-19T02:00:00.000-07:00

According to Mon.itor.Us network among 20 highest number of test migrations, 54 tests formerly hosted on ThePlanet.com moved to other hosts, while 176 tests from other ISPs now are with ThePlanet.com.

This table shows how many tests moved from one ISP to another, according to Mon.itor.Us monitoring data during 6 months. We took 20 highest number of test migrations.

Mon.itor.Us and ISP Uptime Ranking for March - July 2008

2008-08-21T03:08:00.000-07:00

Thee months after the last ISP ranking report Mon.itor.Us, a leading free website monitoring service, publishes new uptime statistics based on over 65,000 http tests and over 160 million checks for http performed during reporting period.

Uptime Statistics

The results are presented in the tables show: ISPs provided higher uptime from the US than Europe. 20 ISPs from Europe provided 99% + uptime and only one reached 99.5%, while 10 ISPs provided 99.5% + uptime according to the test results from the US location.

-----------------------------------------------
Mon.itor.Us performs over 18 million checks per day between http, ping, https, ftp, pop, smtp,
dns, tcp, udp, imap, sip tests. Chart below shows allocation of the tests performed during the reporting period.

Hosting Companies' Uptime according to Mon.itor.Us in February 2008

2008-03-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

The previous month Mon.itor.Us reported figures on Best Hosting Providers in 2007. It was quite a unique approach to measure the hosting company SLA based on aggregated performance of all http checks per each provider.

In February 2008 the monitoring results are as follows:

There were only 5 companies providing 99.5% + uptime from Europe in February 2008. Those are Google, 1&1 Internet, Akamai International, CrystalTech Web Hosting and Rackspace.

The following providers', iPowerweb, LiquidWeb, Hosteurope GmbH, Akamai Technologies, uptime went down compared to the 2007 results. Since there are 2 monitoring locations in Europe, Mon.itor. the data weighs is higher than those of the USA.

ISPs with 99.5%+ uptime from USA in February 2008 as shown in the table below are Akamai International B.V., Google, AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, 1&1 Internet, Rackspace.com, CrystalTech Web Hosting, ADDD2NET COM INC DBA LUNARPAGES, Hosteurope GmbH, GoDaddy.com, Peer 1 Dedicated Hosting, FastServers, Liquid Web and Bluehost.
High uptime providers' number increased compared to 2007 report, but iPowerweb again does not apprear among the top.

Ranking ISPs According to their Performance on Internet

2008-01-22T02:14:00.000-08:00

Nowadays when internet businesses are trying to grow, finding reliable hosting companies is a tedious process. There are many ISP companies all claiming high performance and uptime. How would you evaluate all the information provided in many blogs and forums to be able to choose an ISP that would best fit company business goals? Answering such a question could be relatively easy if performance measurements such as uptime, speed and popularity of ISPs could be accurately compared.

Mon.itor.Us published a study called Best Hosting Providers in 2007: Mon.itor.Us statistics that suggests another unique angle of comparing ISPs as being a reliable, high performance hosting company.

In the report Mon.itor.Us ranked ISPs based on aggregated statistics of uptime and performance of all servers that belong to a particular ISP, from the end-users' perspective. They utilized the real time external monitoring data from all the HTTP checks performed for the Web sites hosted on a particular ISP. Hosts with at least 100 sites being monitored by Mon.itor.Us were considered. Mon.itor.Us evaluated the ISPs from three conditions: Popularity, Availability and Response time. The aggregated data was then summerized in 7 tables:

1-Most Popular 20 ISPs in Mon.itor.Us Network 2007
2-ISPs in Mon.itor.Us Network Provided 99.5%+ Uptime in 2007
3-ISPs in Mon.itor.Us Network Provided 99.5%+ Uptime from USA in 2007
4-ISPs in Mon.itor.Us Network Provided 99.5%+ Uptime from Europe in 2007
5-ISPs in Mon.itor.Us Network Provided High Speed Connection in 2007
6-ISPs in Mon.itor.Us Network Provided High Speed Connection from USA in 2007
7-ISPs in Mon.itor.Us Network Provided High Speed Connection from Europe in 2007

It is also mentioned that the study isn't intended to evaluate the providers' hosting service, since there are more important criteria such as price and available features. But the study provides a unique approach to rank ISPs assessing their actual performance on the Internet.

Here's the link to the report: http://blog.mon.itor.us/?p=382