Every quarter, content delivery network Akamai delivers a State of the Internet report looking at the Internet in terms of traffic, speed and connectivity. The latest report shows that the rest of the world is continuing to outpace the U.S. in terms of speed, while the U.S. becomes the leading source of “attack traffic” worldwide.
According to the report, the U.S. “became the top attack traffic source in the second quarter of 2010, account for 11% of observed attack traffic in total.” China and Russia followed, accounting for 20% of attack traffic combined.
Akamai’s State of the Internet report also looks at Internet connectivity, mobile connectivity and broadband speeds. It found that the number of IP addresses increased by 18% from the previous year, with the U.S. constituting the majority of those IP addresses. (See Richard MacManus’ article on how we’re running out of IP addresses.)
The report also offers a list of the top 100 cities for broadband speeds worldwide and – no surprise here – the U.S. does not stand at the top of that list. According to Akamai, Asia dominates the world in terms of broadband speeds, with Masan, South Korea leading the pack. Masan is the only city in the world with an average connection speed higher than 20 Mbps. Out of 100 cities, Asia had 62 on Akamai’s list, while only eight U.S. cities made appearances.
The good news here, however, is that speeds in the U.S. have increased since the third quarter of 2009. At that time, the average broadband speed in the U.S. was 3.9 Mbps and now it has increased to 4.6 Mbps.
