The shortest and fastest way between two places may be a straight line. But that's not how the Internet works, Shklar said. Unlike a phone connection where a specific circuit is open during a call, Internet requests can travel varying routes between the computer making the request and the destination site. Delays can occur anywhere along the route, mainly because of Internet traffic. Keynote has computers around the world that it uses in its testing.
Some cities have more than one, but the company keeps only one in Tampa.
Every hour between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m., it automatically measures the time to access and download 40 Web sites. Each site is downloaded four times an hour, with computers connected to high-speed T1 phone lines. Keynote then calculates an average response time for each site. To go from Keynote's headquarters computer in San Mateo to Tampa, the route included San Mateo, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, Atlanta, Orlando and Tampa, passing nine network nodes. Traffic at any of those nodes can delay your request.