Weekly API Analysis: Now With Duck Duck Go!

This Week’s API Highlights

• UK in the UK Government API category takes the overall title again this week with a CASC score of 9.76 down from 9.86 last week.
• Department of Justice in the US Government API takes the overall title again with a median latency of 48 ms, the same as last week.
• NHS in the US Government API category is the loser this week with a CASC score of 6.42.
• We take a good, hard look at the performance of a newcomer in the Search API category, Duck Duck Go.

Something of interest

We have added Duck Duck Go to the Search API category (we are planning to add more search APIs in the coming weeks). They came in well behind Google and Microsoft Bing, but with a very respectable CASC score of 9.01.

The API is fast and has 100% availability, but is let down by 3.17% outliers.

Interestingly, we see some big variations between locations in terms of Total Time, but also some unusual behavior.

The fastest location is AWS Oceania, but the slowest is another AWS location, East Asia.

The second-fastest location is Azure South America and the third Google Oceania, so Duck Duck Go is very much not an API optimized, like so many just for Europe and North America.

DNS Lookup Time for an API should be 4 ms or 12 ms everywhere. Duck Duck Go manages this in 4 out of 22 regions (plus a couple of 13 ms locations), so an easy win would be to optimize the DNS configuration everywhere.

If they can manage 4 ms from AWS Oceania, Duck Duck Go can manage 12 ms or so everywhere.

TCP Connection Time is blisteringly fast in South Asia, South America and Oceania (except for Azure, which still comes in at a respectable 14 ms). East Asia is the laggard for this API component.

Handshake Time is again quick in South Asia, South America and Oceania except for Azure. East Asia is even more clearly the slowest region for this component and is obviously the prime area to focus on for improving the performance of the API.

Process Time is about the same everywhere except in East Asia. This suggests that Duck Duck Go might not be hosted in that region. This is one reason why you need to actively monitor your APIs.

API Performance can vary greatly between regions and for a global API like Duck Duck Go, you can’t afford to letting your users down in East Asia, especially when you can see that you are capable of providing a first rate service from other regions (Oceania, South America, South Asia) that often suffer from poor latency.

API Analysis: Tops in Overall Quality

Week Ending 29 March 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Corporate Infrastructure	GitHub	9.67
COVID-19	WHO	9.42
Search	Google	9.44
Social Networks	Google	9.71
UK Government	GOV.UK	9.76
US Government	Bureau of Labor Statistics	9.70
Messaging APIs	Slack	9.33

GOV.UK in the UK Government category takes the overall title this week with a CASC score of 9.76 down from 9.86 last week. A CASC score of over 9.00 is very good and one of 9.50 or more exceptional. Four of the seven categories are headed by organizations with a CASC score of 9.50 or more this week, down from last week. Sustaining a CASC score of >9.25 over several weeks is a good showing and congratulations to those organizations that achieved it. This week, all seven categories are topped by an API with a CASC score of 9.33 or more.

API Analysis: Top Performers by Latency

Week Ending 29 March 2021

Category	Organization	Median Latency
Corporate Infrastructure	Github	217 ms
COVID-19	WHO	90 ms
Search	Duck Duck Go	117 ms
Social Networks	Google	54 ms
UK Government	Police.UK	68 ms
US Government	Department of Justice	48 ms
Messaging APIs	Slack	268 ms

Department of Justice in the US Government takes the overall title again with a median latency of 48 ms, the same as last week. One thing that should be considered when looking at API CASC scores. It’s possible for an API to have periods of time when they are very fast but also periods when they are extremely slow. This means that users will very often have a subpar experience. You don’t want to simply be fast from time to time. You want to be consistently running swiftly. It is not a good idea to rely on your fastest performance. Overall speed is the real issue.

API Analysis: Worst Quality

Week Ending 29 March 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Corporate Infrastructure	Nobody under 8.00!
COVID-19	CDC Web	7.33
Search	Nobody under 8.00!
Social Networks	Nobody under 8.00!
UK Government	NHS	6.42
US Government	Data.gov	6.57
Messaging	Nobody under 8.00!

NHS in the US Government API category takes the overall Wooden Spoon this week with a CASC score of 6.42. Four out of the seven categories don’t have an API that appears in the list because there is no API in that category outside the Green Zone, the same as last week. See you again in a week as we head out of March and into April (spring again!). Don’t forget to look out for our monthly report for February (the March report will be coming next week) and the weekly and monthly financial API reports. We will also be publishing special reports on the State of the APIs in the 2020, so that’s something else to look forward to!

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