A minimum Internet Performance Bar exists that, if met, should deliver top-tier website performance, regardless of industry, according to the 2019 Digital Experience Performance Benchmark Report, from ThousandEyes, a comparative analysis of web, infrastructure and network performance metrics from the top 20 US digital retail, travel and media websites.
The research measured Internet, network, server and experience metrics every 10 minutes for 60 days across 36 major metros across the US In total, over 300M unique measurements were collected and analyzed
Findings from the research include:
Each industry displays unique performance patterns
The three measured industries (retail, media and entertainment, and travel and hospitality) display distinct performance cohort behaviors that differ from each other. For example, top retail sites fall into two distinct clusters of HTTP response times along a mostly uniform range of network latency, while media and entertainment sites saw a more uniform range of HTTP response times but with two distinct clusters of network latency.
Significant performance variations exist
Significant performance variations exist, despite perceived market maturity. Performance variations across CDN providers, ISPs and geographies exist even in the highly mature US market. This makes real-time operational visibility from a variety of geographical and Internet user vantage points important so businesses can keep a real-time eye on unexpected performance blockers.
Delivering strong DNS, network and HTTP response time performance will help
Focusing on delivering strong DNS, network and HTTP response time performance will help most companies deliver top-tier digital experiences.
60% of sites with 1st quartile response times delivered DNS and network performance at or better than the median. Delivering near to or better than the median response time highly correlates with strong page load performance. 87% of sites that did so delivered 1st quartile page load times.
Meeting A minimum Internet Performance Bar
A minimum Internet Performance Bar exists that, if met, should deliver top-tier website performance, regardless of industry. Given cross-vertical performance ranges across the gathered metrics, it is recommended that operations teams minimally target DNS time of 25ms, network latency to the CDN edge of 15ms and HTTP response time of 350ms, from all important markets within the US.
"Internet performance is an under-appreciated yet major contributor to digital experience, and in the battle for customer loyalty, every millisecond matters," said Alex Henthorn-Iwane, report author and VP of Product Marketing at ThousandEyes.
The Latest
In Part 1 of this two-part series, I defined multi-CDN and explored how and why this approach is used by streaming services, e-commerce platforms, gaming companies and global enterprises for fast and reliable content delivery ... Now, in Part 2 of the series, I'll explore one of the biggest challenges of multi-CDN: observability.
CDNs consist of geographically distributed data centers with servers that cache and serve content close to end users to reduce latency and improve load times. Each data center is strategically placed so that digital signals can rapidly travel from one "point of presence" to the next, getting the digital signal to the viewer as fast as possible ... Multi-CDN refers to the strategy of utilizing multiple CDNs to deliver digital content across the internet ...
We surveyed IT professionals on their attitudes and practices regarding using Generative AI with databases. We asked how they are layering the technology in with their systems, where it's working the best for them, and what their concerns are ...
40% of generative AI (GenAI) solutions will be multimodal (text, image, audio and video) by 2027, up from 1% in 2023, according to Gartner ...
Today's digital business landscape evolves rapidly ... Among the areas primed for innovation, the long-standing ticket-based IT support model stands out as particularly outdated. Emerging as a game-changer, the concept of the "ticketless enterprise" promises to shift IT management from a reactive stance to a proactive approach ...
In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 10, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses Generative AI ...
By 2026, 30% of enterprises will automate more than half of their network activities, an increase from under 10% in mid-2023, according to Gartner ...
A recent report by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) reveals that nearly 95% of organizations use a combination of do-it-yourself (DIY) and vendor solutions for network automation, yet only 28% believe they have successfully implemented their automation strategy. Why is this mixed approach so popular if many engineers feel that their overall program is not successful? ...
As AI improves and strengthens various product innovations and technology functions, it's also influencing and infiltrating the observability space ... Observability helps translate technical stability into customer satisfaction and business success and AI amplifies this by driving continuous improvement at scale ...
Technical debt is a pressing issue for many organizations, stifling innovation and leading to costly inefficiencies ... Despite these challenges, 90% of IT leaders are planning to boost their spending on emerging technologies like AI in 2025 ... As budget season approaches, it's important for IT leaders to address technical debt to ensure that their 2025 budgets are allocated effectively and support successful technology adoption ...
