The global average connection speed rose 5 percent to 2.9 Mbps, according to Akamai's newly released Fourth Quarter, 2012 State of the Internet Report.
Akamai counted nearly 700 million unique IPv4 addresses from 240 countries/regions connecting to its Intelligent Platform in 4Q 2012, representing a 13% growth over 2011. The company estimates that over 1 billion unique Web users connected to its platform during the quarter.
Some highlights of the report:
- Year-over-year, the global unique IP address count increased by nearly 10 percent, or more than 71 million, compared to the fourth quarter of 2011.
- Akamai observed attack traffic from 177 unique countries/regions during the fourth quarter of 2012, down from 180 in the third quarter. China again maintained its position as the single largest volume source of observed traffic at 41 percent of the total, up from 33 percent in the prior quarter. The United States remained in the number two spot despite a drop in observed attack traffic from 13 percent to 10 percent in the fourth quarter. Turkey took over Russia's number three spot with 4.7 percent.
- Akamai customers reported 768 DDoS attacks in 2012, up more than 200 percent from 2011.
- Year-over-year, average connection speeds grew by 25 percent, with nine of the top 10 countries also demonstrating growth. In fact, only the Netherlands (3.3 percent), Hong Kong (5.4 percent) and Japan (19 percent) reported growth below 20 percent between 2011 and 2012.
- Global average peak connection speeds enjoyed a quarter-over-quarter increase of 4.6 percent to 16.6 Mbps. Hong Kong again claimed the highest peak connection speed at 57.5 Mbps, a rise of 6.2 percent from last quarter.
- Year-over-year, global average peak connection speeds once again demonstrated significant improvement, rising 35 percent.
