US Survey: CompuServe the fastest network

CompuServe delivered the fastest average Web-page download of 2.64 seconds. MCI took second place with 3.038 seconds, and Digex took bronze with 3.154 seconds.

Keynote officials said overall backbone performance has improved 40 percent since the index started last year.

The survey was based on more than 3.6 million performance measurements taken from 36 vantage points in 27 major cities on 10 different networks during the 30-day period from Dec. 15, 1997, to Jan. 14, 1998.

According to Keynote, the top 10 speediest networks (and their download times) are:

CompuServe (2.64 seconds)

MCI (3.038 seconds)

Digex (3.154 seconds)

IBM (3.329 seconds)

AT&T (3.446 seconds)

Savvis (3.726 seconds)

Epoch (3.735 seconds)

UUnet (3.752 seconds)

IDT (3.879 seconds)

NapNet (4.175 seconds)