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Broadband performance for the election: Labour down, Lib Dems up
06 May 2010 | 11.20 Europe/London
It could be an ominous sign for Gordon Brown, or just a quirky bit of fun, but software developed by a company to monitor web site performance has found the Labour party website has been outperformed by its rivals, particularly the Liberal Democrats.
In an odd case of web server performance matching the opinion polls, Labour has dropped in the fourth week of campaigning. In fact, this week the Labour home page has been taking an average of more than 6 seconds to deliver its message, compared to just under a second to reveal the Liberal Democrats site.
The research found:
Rank by Speed (seconds)
Liberal Democrats 0.93
Green Party 1.12
Conservatives 1.99
Labour 6.42
However, the four parties surveyed had comparable availability rates well in excess of 99%, with the Liberal Democrats again leading the pack with a success rate (ie uptime) of 100%.
Rank by Success Rate (percentage)
Liberal Democrats 100.00
Conservative 99.98
Green Party 99.96
Labour 99.84
The results were gathered by Keynote Systems using its Keynote Transaction Perspective which uses Internet Explorer on PCs dotted around the country to log on to sites to measure their response rates. These are then averaged out.
The only real finding of note from the final week of campaigning was that Labour’s site was slow to respond, although this could, of course, be down to additional interest in the party’s home page slowing down its performance. Certainly when this SamKnows reporter logged on to the four featured websites, all appeared instantly.
Nevertheless, the company claims it is a significant finding because many votes will have been put off waiting to read about Labour’s policies in the final days before the election.
According to Keynote Systems, information from NetCraft.com suggests the four parties are hosted as follows:
Lib Dems are using Windows Server 2008, IIS 7.5 hosted by http://www.bytel.net.uk/
Conservatives are using Windows Server 2003, IIS 6.0 hosted by http://www.rackspace.com/index.php
Labour are using Linux, Apache hosted by http://www.rackspace.com/index.php
Green Party are using Linux, lighttpd 1.4.19 hosted by http://www1.uk.gyron.net/
In an odd case of web server performance matching the opinion polls, Labour has dropped in the fourth week of campaigning. In fact, this week the Labour home page has been taking an average of more than 6 seconds to deliver its message, compared to just under a second to reveal the Liberal Democrats site.
The research found:
Rank by Speed (seconds)
Liberal Democrats 0.93
Green Party 1.12
Conservatives 1.99
Labour 6.42
However, the four parties surveyed had comparable availability rates well in excess of 99%, with the Liberal Democrats again leading the pack with a success rate (ie uptime) of 100%.
Rank by Success Rate (percentage)
Liberal Democrats 100.00
Conservative 99.98
Green Party 99.96
Labour 99.84
The results were gathered by Keynote Systems using its Keynote Transaction Perspective which uses Internet Explorer on PCs dotted around the country to log on to sites to measure their response rates. These are then averaged out.
The only real finding of note from the final week of campaigning was that Labour’s site was slow to respond, although this could, of course, be down to additional interest in the party’s home page slowing down its performance. Certainly when this SamKnows reporter logged on to the four featured websites, all appeared instantly.
Nevertheless, the company claims it is a significant finding because many votes will have been put off waiting to read about Labour’s policies in the final days before the election.
According to Keynote Systems, information from NetCraft.com suggests the four parties are hosted as follows:
Lib Dems are using Windows Server 2008, IIS 7.5 hosted by http://www.bytel.net.uk/
Conservatives are using Windows Server 2003, IIS 6.0 hosted by http://www.rackspace.com/index.php
Labour are using Linux, Apache hosted by http://www.rackspace.com/index.php
Green Party are using Linux, lighttpd 1.4.19 hosted by http://www1.uk.gyron.net/