The first quarter 2009 state of the internet report prepared by Akamai Technologies has ranked India at 20 globally for number of unique IP addresses with over 3 million IP?s.

It also ranked India at 11 with 1.60% of observed attack traffic and ranked at 107 for average connection speed, at 898 kbps as against the global average connection speed of 1.7 mbps.

Akamai Technologies, the leader in powering rich media, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, brings out quarterly report which provides insight into key internet statistics such as origin of attack traffic, network and web site outage and internet connectivity levels across the globe.

The report has found that India?s IP addresses has recorded a 52% year-on-year growth and 17% from last quarter of 2008. In comparison, United States was ranked at 1 with 116.1 million unique IPs.

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.?

During Q1 Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 68 unique countries around the world. 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.

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 United States and countries around the globe, stimulus funding was allocated in the first quarter to help improve broadband availability in rural areas.

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 5% increase (from the fourth quarter of 2008) globally in the number of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai?s network.

From a global connection speed perspective, Japan unseated South Korea for the highest levels of ?high broadband? 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%.