Akamai Announces Second Quarter 2011 'State of the Internet' Report

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

• More than 604 million unique IP addresses connect to Akamai Intelligent Platform in Q2 2011
• The Netherlands takes top spot for high broadband connectivity
• Taiwan is origin of most attack traffic during the quarter

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere, today released its Second Quarter, 2011 State of the Internet report.  Based on data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform™, which serves as much as 30 percent of the world's Web traffic at any one time, the report provides insight into key global statistics such as Internet penetration, mobile traffic and data consumption, origins of attack traffic and SSL usage, and global and regional connection speeds.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100225/AKAMAILOGO )

New to the second quarter 2011 edition of the report are sections breaking out data for the Asia Pacific and Europe regions, complementing the U.S. section of the report.  The inclusion of these sections incorporating geographic-specific data is intended to make it easier to put global statistics into regional context and allow readers to more conveniently access data of most interest.  

Highlights from Akamai's 2011 second quarter report:

Global Internet Penetration

In the second quarter of 2011, more than 604 million unique IP addresses from 238 countries and regions connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform.  This represents 3.4 percent more IP addresses than connected in the first quarter of 2011, and an increase of 21 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Among those countries listed in the top 10 list for the number of unique IPv4 addresses connecting to the Akamai Intelligent Platform during the quarter, Brazil logged the greatest quarter-over-quarter increase at 9.0 percent, growing to over 15 million IP addresses, with Japan's 8.7 percent growth to nearly 45 million IP addresses a close second.  For European countries in the top 10, Italy boasted the greatest quarterly gain at 5.4 percent, growing to just over 14 million IP addresses, while Germany mustered an increase of only 0.4 percent, remaining just below 35 million IP addresses.  The United States managed to add only 0.6 percent to its unique IP address count, remaining just below 143.5 million IP addresses.

Mobile Connection Speeds and Data Consumption

In the second quarter of 2011, the average measured connection speed for known mobile providers worldwide ranged from a high of slightly more than 5 Mbps to a low of 209 kbps. Approximately three-quarters of the surveyed providers had average connection speeds above 1 Mbps.

With regard to average peak connection speeds for the 108  mobile providers worldwide  for which Akamai analyzed data, the report highlights a range of 23.4 Mbps as the fastest to 1.2 Mbps as the slowest.  Of all such mobile providers, three boasted average peak connection speeds above 20 Mbps, 27 achieved average peak connection speeds above 10 Mbps and 47 recorded average peak connection speeds greater than 5 Mbps.  Only one mobile provider (located in South Africa) did not record an average peak connection speed above 2 Mbps.  

During the second quarter of 2011, mobile consumption figures remained fairly consistent with data from the first quarter.  Users at 10 of the surveyed mobile providers consumed an average of 1 GB or more per month from the Akamai platform.  Users at 74 of the surveyed providers consumed greater than 100 MB per month of content from Akamai, and users at the remaining 20 providers consumed less than 100 MB per month.

Through its relationship with Ericsson, Akamai continues to include data collected by the equipment provider in the State of the Internet report.  According to Ericsson, the volume of mobile data traffic in the second quarter of 2011 doubled year-over-year and grew eight percent quarter-over-quarter.      

Attack Traffic and SSL Trends

In the second quarter of 2011, Taiwan generated the most attack traffic observed by Akamai, bumping last quarter's newcomer to the list, Myanmar, to second place.  Looking at total observed attack traffic aggregated by region, Asia Pacific/Oceania generated 47 percent of such attack traffic, Europe 30 percent, the Americas 20 percent, and Africa a mere 3 percent.

SSL is widely used across the Web to enable secure communications with social networks, e-commerce sites and financial services applications, to name a few.  SSL ciphers help to create these secure connections and are based on well-known encryption algorithms.  New to this quarter's report is an examination of trends in SSL ciphers presented by Web clients to the Akamai Secure Content Delivery Network.  Since the beginning of 2009, Akamai notes that use of the SSL cipher AES 128-SHA-1 has nearly tripled while the use of SSL cipher RC4-MD5-128 has declined by almost two-thirds.  Interpreting the observed trends, as well as data observed for other SSL ciphers, Akamai believes the use of RC4-based ciphers may reach near-zero levels over the next several years. Furthermore, these trends may indicate a shift towards stronger ciphers, which could lead to SSL becoming more secure over time.

100 Fastest Cities Worldwide

In the second quarter of 2011, analysis of the top 100 fastest cities around the world, based on average connection speeds, reflected the following:

• Cities in Asia continue to dominate the list, including 59 cities in Japan, 10 cities in South Korea, as well as Hong Kong.
• Brno, Czech Republic is the fastest city in Europe (#55 out of 100).
• 18 U.S. cities made the list, with San Jose, CA ranking as the fastest (#9 out of 100).

Moving to High Broadband Connectivity

In the second quarter of 2011, 27 percent of all connections to the Akamai Intelligent Platform were made at high broadband speeds (>5 Mbps).  Taking the top spot in high broadband adoption is the Netherlands, which boasts 68 percent of its country's connections to Akamai above 5 Mbps.  Hong Kong and South Korea achieved 59 percent and 58 percent high broadband adoption respectively. Within the list of top 10 countries in high broadband adoption, seven are in Europe.

Enhanced Data Visualization Tool

The companion data visualization tool at www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet, launched in conjunction with the first quarter 2011 State of the Internet report, has been enhanced to include data for individual U.S. states, along with an expanded data window which now ranges from the third quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2011.  The tool allows users to generate and download graphs highlighting and comparing average connection speed, average peak connection speed and high broadband/broadband/narrowband adoption rates.

About the Akamai State of the Internet report

Each quarter, Akamai publishes a "State of the Internet" report. This report includes data gathered from across the Akamai Intelligent Platform about attack traffic, broadband adoption, mobile connectivity and other relevant topics concerning the Internet and its usage, as well as trends seen in this data over time. To learn more and to access the archive of past reports, please visit www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet.

To download the figures from the second quarter 2011 State of the Internet report, please visit

http://wwwns.akamai.com/soti/soti_q211_figures.zip.

About Akamai

Akamai® is the leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere.  At the core of the Company's solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ providing extensive reach, coupled with unmatched reliability, security, visibility and expertise.  Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling enterprises to securely leverage the cloud.  To learn more about how Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world, please visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.