Jun, 2003 : Netcraft Launches Hosting Performance Comparisons

📅 June 24, 2003 - Internet services firm Netcraft (netcraft.com) said today it is now measuring and making available the response times of 50 leading hosting providers' Web sites in order give an indication of response times currently available in the industry.

"Buying a dedicated server or moving a site to a new network provider can be a stab in the dark in that it is often not easy to see the quality and reliability of the provider's network performance until after the purchase has been made," the company said in an announcement on its Web site. "Netcraft's view is that lack of transparency on network performance and outages harms the whole industry, both consumers and providers."
Performance measurements are made at 15-minute intervals using http GET requests from four separate locations in the US and UK, with averages calculated over a 24-hour period. During each http GET request several stages are timed, including DNS lookup, connection setup and request responses.
More information is available here.
Netcraft is based in Bath, England.