Akamai announces first quarter 2009 state of the internet report

Akamai Technologies, the leader in powering rich media, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today announced the release of the first quarter 2009 edition of its quarterly State of the Internet report available for download at http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet. Leveraging information gathered from its network and published reports, Akamai’s quarterly report provides insight into key Internet statistics such as origin of attack traffic, network and Web site outages and Internet connectivity levels across the globe.

Highlights and trends from the report for India follow:

– Ranked #20 globally for number of unique IP addresses seen by Akamai, with over 3 million IP?s

— Up 52% year over year, and 17% from Q4 2008

— In comparison, United States was ranked #1 with 116.1 million unique IPs

– Ranked #107 globally for average connection speed, at 898 Kbps

— Globally, the average connection speed was approximately 1.7 Mbps

— The United States ranked #18 globally, with an average connection speed of 4.2 Mbps while South Korea ranked #1 with an average connection speed of 11 Mbps

– Ranked #11 globally in terms of attack traffic, with 1.60% of observed attack traffic

— In comparison, China was ranked #1 with 27.59% of observed attack traffic followed by the United States ranked #2 with 22.15% of observed attack traffic

– Ranked #148 globally for number of unique IP addresses per capita, with 0.0023

– Ranked #63 globally for high broadband adoption, with 0.91% of connections to Akamai at speeds over 5 Mbps

— Up 57% year over year, and up 63% from Q4, 2008

– Ranked #87 globally for broadband adoption, with 5.31% of connections to Akamai at speeds over 2 Mbps

— Down 33% year over year, and up 42% from Q4 2008

– Ranked #140 globally for broadband penetration, with 0.001broadband IPs per capita in Q1 2009

– Ranked #53 globally for narrowband adoption, with 23.2% of connections to Akamai at speeds below 256 Kbps

— Down 17% year over year and down 10% from Q4 2008

– Ranked #163 globally for narrowband penetration, with 0.0006 narrowband IP?s per capita in Q1 2009

Commenting on the report, Sanjay Singh, managing director, Akamai, said, ?We continue to see strong trends that suggest an ever-improving Internet penetration figures in India. For example, this quarter we reported the number of unique IPs in India has gone up 52% year over year and the average connections speed was at 898 Kbps. The average connection speed will be an interesting number to track in the coming quarters as it will give us a clear indication of the growing broadband adoption rates in the country.?

Attack Traffic

During the first quarter of 2009, Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 68 unique countries around the world. The United States and China were the two largest attack traffic sources, accounting for nearly 50% of observed traffic in total. The top 10 ports saw approximately 90% of the observed attack traffic, with more two-thirds of the traffic likely related to the Conficker worm.

Connectivity

A number of new submarine cable projects were announced or deployed in the first quarter that are expected ultimately to improve Internet connectivity for countries in Africa, Europe, South America and the Caribbean, and Oceania. New WiMAX projects and deployments will bring broadband wireless connectivity to countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and the former Soviet Union. Fiber-to-the-home efforts announced in the first quarter will benefit users in New Zealand, Australia, Bali, Latvia, Scotland, and England.

The first quarter also saw nominal advances in IPv6 adoption, including seven more country-level domains enabling their DNS servers for IPv6. In the United States, and countries around the globe, ?stimulus funding? was allocated in the first quarter to help improve broadband availability in rural areas.

Broadband Connectivity

Through its globally-deployed server network, and by virtue of the billions of requests for Web content that it services on a daily basis, Akamai has developed a unique level of visibility into the connection speeds of those systems issuing the requests, and as such, of broadband adoption around the globe. Akamai observed a nearly five per cent increase (from the fourth quarter of 2008) globally in the number of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai?s network.

Current highlights and historical trends for average connection speeds on a global basis can be found in Akamai’s data visualization tool, available at http://www.akamai.com/dv5. In the first quarter of 2009, one-fifth of the Internet connections around the world were at speeds of greater than 5 Mbps, a 5 per cent increase from the prior quarter, and a nearly 30 per cent increase over the same period last year. Globally, the average connection speed increased by approximately 11 per cent, growing to 1.7 Mbps, and more than 120 countries had connection speeds under 1 Mbps.

Fastest Global Countries

From a global connection speed perspective, Japan unseated South Korea for the highest levels of ?high broadband? (>5 Mbps) connectivity, though South Korea maintained the highest average connection speed, at 11 Mbps. For the first time since publishing the State of the Internet report in the first quarter of 2008, South Korea no longer had the largest percentage of connections to Akamai at speeds above 5 Mbps, with a significant 25% decline. Akamai also saw fewer unique IP addresses from South Korea during the first quarter, along with a lower average connection speed. The first place spot was taken by Japan, with 57% of connections to Akamai at high broadband levels. Nearly a third of Japan?s connections to Akamai are at speeds between 5-10 Mbps. Sweden showed a similar percentage of connections between 5-10 Mbps, while other countries in the top 10 saw levels below 30 per cent.