We've read all about emerging technologies and the promises of the information highway: voice over IP, electronic commerce, virtual private networking and telecommuting on a global scale. Although many of these services are still on the horizon, the medium that will make these possible, the public Internet, is now entering a new era. For many, the Internet is no longer a luxury--it's a business necessity.

To view the Report card.With the supplier of this medium playing a pivotal role, choosing your ISP now becomes a far more critical process. Most organizations are long past that initial hurdle of getting connected: SMTP gateways are routing mail and Web pages are up. That was the easy part. But staying connected while keeping up with demand, growth and the evolution of the fastest growing network in history presents quite a challenge--even to the most savvy of network professionals.

Those who are dependent on the fruits of the Internet cannot afford outages, network latency or spotty service. Those burned by the ISPs who aren't equipped to handle these dynamic needs are looking to ally with someone who can. To aid in this quest, we looked at some of the largest ISPs in the enterprise arena: ANS Communications, DIGEX, GTE Internetworking, MCI, Netcom On-line Communication Services, PSINet, Sprint Corp. and UUNET.

A Whole Lotta Packets How do you objectively analyze one of the most debated areas of modern day networking? As much as we would have liked to move the NAPs (Network Access Points) into our labs for a few weeks of testing, the simple fact is we don't have that kind of space. Rather than follow other publications and set up the world's largest ping, script the most elaborate Web spider or build a 1.21-gigawatt fusion-based sniffer--with RMON (Remote Monitoring), of course--we turned to the those in the real world who struggle with the issues every day: enterprise networks managers.

Over the course of six months we interviewed clients (both provider-supplied and ones we fleshed out), network engineers, routing gurus, chief network architects and users with attitudes about these ISPs. We sorted through everything from route tables to mailing-list archives to visual representations of the current autonomous systems structure. We inquired about availability, outages, growth plans and service offerings. We spoke with network managers juggling dual-homing issues, on the front ends of DS-3 and OC-3 pipes, and coordinating provider migrations. We checked routers for freshness and made sure cables were year 2000-compliant. We even built a mock company to get some real-world pricing (see "Enterprise ISP Real-World Pricing," on page 124). Make no mistake, we turned over as much data as we could get our hands on--and then some.

The result? Quite simply, it's no longer about who has the biggest backbone or the largest implementation of the latest modem "standard." Today's enterprise networks demand more than a big pipe to the Internet. Ask the network administrator who's suffered through a downed Web server, a vicious hacker attack or a BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) routing anomaly about what they think counts. Chances are they won't be raving about that recent ATM switch that was deployed in Dunstable. Rather, they will tell you that they are looking for reliable yet diverse services, responsiveness and accessibility. Sure, connection speeds count--but that is simply the beginning.