CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai
Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud
services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and
business applications, today released its Fourth Quarter, 2013
State of the Internet Report. Based on data gathered from the
Akamai Intelligent Platform™, the report provides insight into key
global statistics such as network connectivity and connection
speeds, attack traffic, broadband trends and availability, and IPv6
adoption. It also includes measurements of page load times using
Akamai's real user monitoring (RUM) capabilities, and provides
insights on Akamai traffic activity related to Internet disruptions
in Syria, Suriname, Guyana, Libya
and Cuba.
Data and graphics from the Fourth Quarter, 2013 State of the
Internet Report can also be found on the Akamai blog and
through the Akamai State of the Internet app for iPads and
iPhones.
Highlights from Akamai's Fourth Quarter, 2013 State of the
Internet Report:
Global Average and Average Peak Connection Speeds
The
global average connection speed continued to improve, with a
quarterly increase of 5.5%, reaching 3.8 Mbps. Despite this
improvement, half of the countries/regions listed among the top 10
in global average connection speeds – including the top four
countries/regions – actually saw nominal declines
quarter-over-quarter, ranging from a loss of 0.7% in the Netherlands to a drop of 6.7% in
Latvia. Despite a 1.1% decline in
average connection speed, South
Korea held the top spot from quarter to quarter, reporting
the highest average connection speed of 21.9 Mbps.
Interestingly, quarterly increases seen in Ireland (8.4% increase to 10.4 Mbps) and
the United States (2% increase to
10 Mbps) helped push both countries to average connection speeds of
10 Mbps or more, marking the first time that all of the top 10
countries/regions had average connection speeds at/above the "high
broadband" threshold.
Overall, 133 qualifying countries/regions ended the year with
higher average connection speeds than the year before, contributing
to an increase of 27% from the end of 2012. Both South Korea and Ireland experienced year-over-year growth of
more than 50%, at 57% and 59%, respectively. The smallest yearly
increase among the top 10 was seen in Latvia, which added 11% during the course of
2013.
Global average peak connection speeds recovered from a small
decline in the third quarter of 2013 with impressive improvement of
30% to 23.2 Mbps in the fourth quarter. A total of 138 qualifying
countries/regions – and all of the top 10 – experienced higher
average peak connection speeds than in the third quarter, with
increases ranging from 1.3% in South
Korea to 179% in Libya,
which improved to 15.8 Mbps. Hong
Kong and South Korea boast
the highest average peak connection speeds and remain the only two
countries/regions above 60 Mbps, at 68 Mbps and 64.4 Mbps,
respectively.
Year over year, the global average peak connection speeds
increased 38% compared to the fourth quarter of 2012. In total, 134
countries/regions experienced annual improvement in average peak
connection speeds, ranging from 2.5% in Chile (to 20.3 Mbps) to 163% in Uruguay (to 36.7 Mbps). The country with the
lowest average peak connection speed was Iran, at 5.5 Mbps, which was up 20% from the
third quarter and 103% year over year.
Global high broadband (>10 Mbps) adoption rates in the fourth
quarter slowed from previous, double-digit percentage growth to a
quarterly increase of 1.6%, staying at 19%. Year-over-year
improvement was strong, however, with the global high broadband
adoption rate increasing by 56% from the fourth quarter of
2012.
Quarter-over-quarter, the global broadband adoption rate grew
4.3%, with 55% of all connections to Akamai taking place at speeds
of 4 Mbps or above. South Korea
and Switzerland topped the list at
94% and 91% adoption, respectively. By the end of 2013, a total of
83 qualifying countries/regions experienced year-over-year growth
in their broadband adoption rates. This resulted in global
broadband adoption growing 27% year-over-year in 2013.
"We've reached a significant milestone in the improvement of
average connection speeds," said David
Belson, editor of the State of the Internet Report.
"The fact that all of the top 10 countries/regions' average
connection speeds are now at or exceeding the high broadband
threshold – and continued strong growth in countries like
South Korea and Ireland – is indicative of the progress that's
being made in broadband penetration. It's reasonable to expect
these promising trends will continue to be reflected in future
reports."
Attack Traffic and Security
Akamai maintains a
distributed set of unadvertised agents deployed across the Internet
to log connection attempts that the company classifies as attack
traffic. Based on the data collected by these agents, Akamai is
able to identify the top countries from which attack traffic
originates, as well as the top ports targeted by these attacks. It
is important to note, however, that the originating country as
identified by the source IP address may not represent the nation in
which an attacker resides.
During the fourth quarter of 2013, Akamai identified 188
countries/regions that originated observed attack traffic, which
are three more than last quarter. China maintained its position as the country
that originated the most observed attack traffic, with
quarter-over-quarter growth from 35% to 43%. It was followed by
the United States at 19% (up from
11%) and Canada – which grew by 25
times quarter-over-quarter to 10%. In contrast to its climb to the
top of the list earlier this year, Indonesia's attack traffic continued to
decline in the fourth quarter to nearly one-fourth of its
third-quarter attack traffic, falling to 5.7%.
Unlike the third quarter, which saw a decline in the
concentration of attacks, the fourth quarter saw growth in the
volume of attack traffic coming from the top 10 countries. Attack
concentration grew to 88%, up from from 83% in the third quarter
and down from 89% in the second quarter of 2013.
Port 445 (Microsoft-DS) remained the most targeted port in the
fourth quarter, growing to 30% of observed attacks quarter over
quarter. It was the top targeted port in six of the top 10
countries/regions, including Germany, Romania, Russia, Taiwan, Canada, and the
United States. Port 80 (WWW/HTTP) remained in second place,
accounting for a consistent 14% of attacks. Port 443
(SSL/HTTPS) remained in third place this quarter, but dropped from
13% to 8.2% quarter over quarter.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack Traffic
In
addition to observations on attack traffic, the State of the
Internet Report includes insight into DDoS attacks based on
reports from Akamai's customers.
Although the number of DDoS attacks reported by Akamai customers
declined from the second quarter (318) to the third quarter of 2013
(281), reported attacks increased 23% from the third quarter to the
fourth quarter (346) of the same year. In total, customers reported
1,153 DDoS attacks in 2013 – a 50% increase from 768 in 2012.
Enterprise and commerce continued to be the industries targeted
most frequently by the reported DDoS attacks in the fourth quarter,
at 159 and 82 attacks, respectively. Together, they account for
just under 70% of the reported attacks during the quarter, while
slightly less than half of the total attacks were reported by
customers in the Americas.
In the Third Quarter, 2013 State of the Internet Report,
Akamai started looking at the likelihood of a company experiencing
repeat attacks after an initial DDoS attack. In the third quarter,
Akamai reported this as a one in four probability. In the fourth
quarter of 2013, the chance of a repeated attack increased
significantly to just over one in three (35%), meaning that 56 of
the 162 organizations that were attacked suffered repeated threats
throughout the quarter.
In February, Akamai acquired Prolexic Technologies, Inc., a
company that provides cloud-based security solutions for protecting
data centers and enterprise IP applications from DDoS attacks. As a
result, future State of the Internet Reports will include
insights using additional observations from Prolexic's Quarterly
DDoS Attack Report. Note that unless otherwise specified,
observations included in the respective reports are based on
separate and distinct sets of DDoS attacks.
Global Internet Penetration
In the fourth quarter of
2013, more than 780 million IPv4 addresses from 238 unique
countries/regions connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform.
This translates to nearly 3% more than in the third quarter and 10%
more than in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Quarterly growth was also seen in eight of the top 10
countries/regions, with the greatest increase once again seen in
Brazil, which added nearly 8% (or
approximately 2.7 million IPv4 addresses).
IPv6 Adoption
The United
States and select European countries continue to lead the
world in terms of IPv6 adoption, with Europe again having seven of the top 10
leading countries. Japan and
Peru are the only countries from
their respective regions to make the top 10 list. Double-digit
percentage growth rates were seen in eight of the top 10 countries,
with Peru and Germany seeing the largest increases, at 41%
and 43%, respectively. The lowest rate of growth was seen in
Romania, which increased by nearly
8% quarter-over-quarter.
Colleges and universities continue to be early adopters of IPv6,
with moderate to large quarterly increases in adoption rates seen
across most of the top 10. Iowa State,
the University of Vienna Austria
and the University of Saskatchewan all
saw double-digit quarterly percentage increases.
Mobile Connectivity
In the fourth quarter of 2013,
average connection speeds on surveyed mobile network providers
ranged from a high of 8.9 Mbps (Russian mobile provider RU-1) down
to a low of 0.6 Mbps (mobile provider ZA-1 in South Africa). The high is down just slightly
from the 9.5 Mbps reported in the third quarter of 2013.
Akamai also conducted a fourth-quarter analysis of Akamai IO
data to determine which user agents were used most frequently for
mobile traffic requests. Based on data collected from a sample of
requests from mobile devices to the Akamai Intelligent Platform
over cellular networks, Android Webkit accounted for approximately
35% of requests and Apple Mobile Safari trailed at more than 29% of
traffic. However, for traffic from mobile devices on all networks
(not just cellular networks), Apple Mobile Safari was responsible
for more than 47% of requests, while Android Webkit drove only 32%
of requests.
Based on traffic data collected by Ericsson, the volume of
mobile data traffic increased by 70% from the fourth quarter of
2012 to the fourth quarter of 2013, and grew approximately 15%
between the third and fourth quarters of 2013.
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
Fourth Quarter, 2013 State of the Internet Report, please
visit: http://wwwns.akamai.com/soti/soti_q413_figures.zip
About Akamai
Akamai® is the leading
provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing
online content and business applications. At the core of the
Company's solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ providing
extensive reach, coupled with first class 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 or
blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.
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tbarth@akamai.com
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SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.