Akamai's 'State of the Internet' Report Enters Fourth Year of Analyzing Global Connectivity, Attack Traffic and Broadband Consumption

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud optimization services, today released its 1st Quarter, 2011 State of the Internet report.  Based on data gathered from the Akamai Internet platform, which carries between 15-30 percent of the world's Web traffic at any one time, the report provides insight into key global Internet statistics such as the world's fastest and slowest regions for connection speed, origins of attack traffic and the highest-performing geographies for mobile connectivity.  (Editor's note: see attached statistics that highlight three-year trends.)

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With the State of the Internet report entering its fourth year of providing quarterly analysis, Akamai has released a new data visualization tool showcasing trends by geography in several measured categories.  The tool allows users to generate and download graphs highlighting average connection speed, average peak connection speed, and high broadband/broadband/narrowband adoption rates.  In addition, the online tool offers quick, easy and customized views of trend data since the report was first published at the beginning of 2008.

Highlights from Akamai's 2011 first quarter report:

Internet Penetration

In the first quarter of 2011, more than 584 million unique IP addresses from 237 countries/regions connected to the Akamai Internet platform.  This represents 5.2 percent more IP addresses than connected in the fourth quarter of 2010, and an increase of 20 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Consistent with last quarter's report, the top ten countries/regions accounted for nearly 70 percent of the total IP addresses, indicating that the majority of the world's unique IP addresses are concentrated within a proportionally small number of geographies.  This report welcomed Italy into the top ten with its 11 percent quarter-over-quarter growth and saw Canada drop out of the top ten.

Mobile Consumption & Connectivity

In the first quarter of 2011, the average measured connection speed for known mobile providers worldwide ranged from a high of slightly more than 6 Mbps to a low of 163 kbps.  The report also identifies a service provider from Poland delivering the highest average mobile connection speed in the first quarter 2011, bumping last quarter's fastest provider from Greece to the number two spot.  

Consumption figures indicate that during Q1 2011, users at seven percent of the surveyed mobile providers consumed an average of 1 GB per month from Akamai's platform.  Users at 73 percent of surveyed providers consumed an average of 100 MB of content from Akamai, and users on the remaining 20 percent of providers consumed less than 100 MB.

As a result of Akamai's recently announced partnership with Ericsson, the report now includes data collected by the equipment provider.  Overall mobile data traffic, as measured by Ericsson, experienced 130 percent yearly growth in the first quarter, and is now more than double the volume of voice traffic.    

Attack Traffic

The latest findings reflected in the report show some significant changes in Q1 2011 related to sources of attack traffic.  Most notably, Myanmar not only made its first appearance on the list, but also ranked #1 by generating 13 percent of attack traffic during this period.  Among other changes, the United States rose from 5th to 2nd, accounting for 10 percent of observed global attack traffic.  Russia dropped into 4th place, accounting for 7.7 percent of global observed attack traffic, down from 10 percent in the previous quarter.  With respect to attack traffic originating from mobile network providers, Italy remained in the top spot, responsible for 25 percent of observed attack traffic in the first quarter.

100 Fastest Cities Worldwide

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

• Cities in Asia dominate the list, including 61 cities in Japan, five cities in South Korea, and Hong Kong.
• Lyse, Norway is the fastest city in Europe (#33 out of 100)
• 18 U.S. cities made the list, with Riverside, CA ranking as the fastest U.S. city (#39 out of 100)

Getting Away from Narrowband

Looking at the world's narrowband connections (connections to Akamai at speeds slower than 256 kbps), the report shows global adoption of narrowband decreased by 15 percent in the first quarter 2011.  Only 3.3 percent of all connections to Akamai were made at narrowband speeds.  France led with the lowest narrowband adoption rate of .3 percent.  

About the Akamai State of the Internet report

Akamai's quarterly State of the Internet report is based on data collected from the globally-distributed Akamai Internet Platform, carrying as much as 30 percent of global Web traffic on any given day, and with servers located in 650 cities, 72 countries and deployed within approximately 1,000 of the Internet's most important networks.  

To learn more, and to access the archive of past reports, please visit www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet.

To download the figures from the Q1 2011 State of the Internet report, please visit:

http://wwwns.akamai.com/soti/soti_q111_figures.zip.

About Akamai

Akamai® provides market-leading, cloud-based services for optimizing Web and mobile content and applications, online HD video, and secure e-commerce.  Combining highly-distributed, energy-efficient computing with intelligent software, Akamai's global platform is transforming the cloud into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, transact and collaborate.  To learn how the world's leading enterprises are optimizing their business in the cloud, please visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.