Cloud platform, Akamai Technologies, has released its State of the Internet report for the second quarter of 2012, which outlines insights into global statistics, such as Internet penetration, mobile connection speeds, origins of attack traffic, and global and regional connection speeds.
The report is gathered from across the Akamai Intelligent Platform, and in addressing Internet and usage topics, presents trends in data over time.
Global Internet penetration
According to the report, over 665 million IPv4 addresses from 242 countries/regions connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform throughout the second quarter, representing a 10 per cent increase year over year (YoY). Based on these findings, Akamai estimates that the total number of unique Web users connecting to its platform during the quarter to be well over one billion as one address can represent multiple individuals.
Of the top 10 countries with the most unique IPv4 addresses connecting to the platform, Brazil experienced the largest growth, with 12 per cent quarter over quarter (QoQ) and 40 per cent YoY.
Industry data indicates that, as a result of such growth, IPv4 addresses are being depleted. Akamai said that European Internet registry, RIPE, recentpy announced that it was down to its final block (roughly 16 million) of IPv4 addresses.
IPv6 traffic on Akamai’s Intelligent Platform also saw growth in the second quarter as customers of all sizes IPv6-enabled their Web sites ahead of the ‘World IPv6 Launch’.
Attack traffic
Throughout the second quarter, Akamai observed attack traffic from 188 unique countries/regions, which is an increase of six over the first quarter.
China remains the primary source of observed traffic at 16 per cent, while the US experienced a slight increase, putting it second with 12 per cent. Turkey rounded out the top three with 7.6 per cent.
Overall, the top 10 stayed consistent, with the exception of Italy displacing Germany from the list. South Korea managed the greatest decrease in attack traffic originations, dropping from 4.3 per cent in the first quarter to 2.1 per cent in the second.
Global average connection speeds
This quarter’s report highlights that global average connection speed increased 13 per cent to 3.0Mbps from the first quarter.
South Korea had the highest average (14.2Mbps), with Japan second (10.7Mbps) and Hong Kong third (8.9Mbps).
Kenya had the greatest growth, jumping 227 per cent to 1.8Mbps. Cote D’Ivoire dropped 29 per cent to 0.4Mbps.
YoY growth is marked at 15 per cent.
Mobile Connectivity
The fastest mobile average connection speed in the second quarter was 7.5Mbps, delivered by a mobile provider in Russia. The fastest mobile average peak connection speed came from a provider in the UK at 44.4Mbps.
Mobile browser data from Akamai IO for the month of June shows approximately 38 per cent of requests on cellular networks came from Android Webkit. About 33 per cent came from Mobile Safari, 23 per cent from Opera Mini, and about four per cent from Blackberry.
