Comparisons with Other Universities
Web Servers
Of all the universities in the top 20 World University Rankings, Imperial College is the only one to use a proprietary server for its main web site (this was verified via Netcraft in February 2007).
In other words: Harvard University, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, University of California Berkeley, Princeton University, University of Chicago, Columbia University, Duke University, Peking University, Cornell University, Australian National University, London School of Economics and Political Science, Ecole Normale Supérieure, National University of Singapore and University of Tokyo all use open source servers.
www.ic.ac.uk uses Microsoft's proprietary and expensive IIS software. Why?
Web Standards-compliance
On February 24, 2007, the standards-compliance of the top 20 universities' main web pages was tested using the W3C Markup Validation Service. Imperial College, a leading institution in science and technology, failed with 313 errors, almost fives times as many as the second worst offender.
- Harvard University: 53 errors
- University of Cambridge: 0 errors
- University of Oxford: 0 errors
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 0 errors
- Yale University: 1 error
- Stanford University: 0 errors
- California Institute of Technology: 30 errors
- University of California Berkeley: 10 errors
- Imperial College London: 313 errors
- Princeton University: 0 errors
- University of Chicago: 63 errors
- Columbia University: 19 errors
- Duke University: 3 errors
- Peking University: 23 errors
- Cornell University: 25 errors
- Australian National University: 21 errors
- London School of Economics and Political Science: 4 errors
- Ecole Normale Supérieure: 12 errors
- National University of Singapore: 25 errors
- University of Tokyo: 5 errors