Akamai Releases Fourth Quarterly 'State Of The Internet' Report

Akamai Technologies has announced the release of the fourth edition of its quarterly State of the Internet report. Leveraging published reports and information gathered from its network, Akamai’s quarterly report provides insight into key Internet statistics such as origin of attack traffic, network outages and broadband connectivity levels across the globe.

As the company’s fourth published edition, the report also provides a full-year view, as well as a quarterly view, into trends. India-specific trends include:

-- India ranked #20 globally for the number of unique IP addresses seen by Akamai, with 2.63 million IPs. The number of IPs saw a 42.91 percent rise year-over-year, and 1.69 percent rise from Q3 2008. In comparison, the United States was ranked #1 with 114.1 million unique IPs.

-- India’s average connection speed was at 772 Kbps and ranked #115 in terms of average connection speed. Globally, the average connection speed was approximately 1.5 Mbps. The United States ranked #17 globally, with an average connection speed of 3.9 Mbps while South Korea ranked #1 with an average connection speed of 15 Mbps.

-- India ranked #17 globally in terms of attack traffic, with 1.16 percent of observed attack traffic. In comparison, the United States was ranked #1 with 22.85 percent of observed attack traffic.

-- India ranked #148 globally for number of unique IP addresses per capita, with 0.0023 addresses per capita.

-- India ranked #62 globally for high broadband adoption, with 0.56 percent of connections to Akamai at speeds over 5 Mbps.

-- India ranked #81 globally for high broadband penetration, with fewer than 0.0001 high broadband IPs per capita in Q4 2008.

-- India ranked #93 globally for broadband adoption, with 3.74 percent of connections to Akamai at speeds over 2 Mbps.

-- India ranked #118 globally for broadband penetration, with 0.0001broadband IPs per capita in Q4 2008.

-- India ranked #55 globally for narrowband adoption, with 25.8 percent of connections to Akamai at speeds below 256 Kbps.

Sanjay Singh, managing director–India, Akamai Technologies, said, “Akamai’s quarterly ‘State of the Internet’ report compares Internet penetration and connections speeds in India with countries across the world. We continue to see strong trends that point to ever-improving Internet penetration figures in India with observed unique IPs growing 43 percent Y-o-Y and average connection speed well above 750 Kbps. The average connection speed will be an interesting number to track in the coming quarters and will give us a clear indication of the growing broadband adoption in the country.”

Attack Traffic

During the fourth quarter of 2008, Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 193 unique countries around the world, up nearly 8 percent from the third quarter count of 179 countries. In the fourth quarter, the United States moved into first place for the first time in 2008, after placing second to either China or Japan throughout the year. Throughout 2008, the United States, China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan were consistently among the top 10 countries that generated the highest percentages of attack traffic.

Broadband Connectivity

In the fourth quarter of 2008, the State of the Internet report began tracking average connection speeds for countries around the world and observed that only six countries connected to Akamai’s network at average speeds in excess of 5 Mbps, and for the year, many countries showed significant increases in their levels of high broadband (>5 Mbps) adoption.

Fastest International Countries

At the end of 2008, approximately 19 percent of Internet connections around the world were at speeds greater than 5 Mbps, representing a 21 percent increase over the average global connection speed at the end of 2007. In line with their average connection speed of 15 Mbps, and their appearance at the top of the list for the prior three quarters, South Korea once again ranked as the country with the highest percentage of connections at high broadband (>5 Mbps) speeds.

Looking at the levels of high broadband penetration in the fourth quarter, South Korea, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway had more high-broadband IPs per capita than in the prior quarter. This is consistent with what would be expected from the initiatives to bring higher-speed connectivity, including Fiber-to-the-Home efforts, to consumers in these countries.