At 897 Kbps, India is #97 for avg connection speed

BANGALORE,INDIA:Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today announced the release of its 3rd Quarter, 2009 State of the Internet report.

Leveraging published reports and information gathered from its network, the Akamai report provides insight into key Internet statistics such as origin of attack traffic, network outages, and broadband connectivity levels across the globe.

Highlights and trends from the report for India follow:

•  Ranked #21 globally for number of unique IP addresses seen by Akamai, with over 3 million unique IPs

o   Up 29 per cent year-over-year, and 0.8 per cent from Q2 2009

o   In a shift from prior quarters, Russia and Brazil unseated the United States and China as the two largest attack traffic sources, accounting for nearly 22 per cent of observed traffic in total.

o   Russia ranked #1 with 13 per cent of observed attack traffic followed by Brazil ranked #2 with 8.6 per cent of observed attack traffic. The United States and China ranked #3 and #4 with 6.9 per cent and 6.5 per cent of observed attack traffic respectively.

·         Ranked #166 globally for number of unique IP addresses per capita, with 0.0029

·         Ranked #63 globally for high broadband adoption, with 0.7 per cent of connections to Akamai at speeds over 5 Mbps

o   Up 26 per cent year-over-year, and down 32 per cent from Q2 2009

·         Ranked #91 globally for broadband adoption, with 4.9 per cent of connections to Akamai at speeds over 2 Mbps

o   Down 3.2 per cent year-over-year, and down 11 per cent from Q2 2009

·         Ranked #138 globally for broadband penetration, with 0.0001 broadband IPs per capita in Q3 2009

·         Ranked #69 globally for narrowband adoption, with 26 per cent of connections to Akamai at speeds below 256 Kbps

o   Down 1.5 per cent year-over-year, and down 5.2 per cent from Q2 2009

·         Ranked #164 globally for narrowband penetration, with 0.0007 narrowband IPs per capita in Q3 2009

Fastest Indian States

Similar to trends seen in the global data for the 3rd quarter of 2009, many states in India maintained average speeds above 768 Kbps, Kerala made it’s way to the top of the list from its third position in the 2nd quarter with an average speed of 1,386 Kbps pushing down Haryana - the 2nd quarter’s topper to the second spot with 1,105 Kbps and Karnataka to the third position with 1,041 kbps.

New to the report in the third quarter, Akamai takes a more granular look at the top 10 fastest cities per continent/region.  The report also adds it’s first-ever look and analysis at connections to Akamai identified as coming from networks associated with mobile providers.

Fastest Cities

The report introduces a ‘city view’ of connection speeds, which reveals that a number of cities around the world have access to particularly high-speed connectivity.  In Asia, Europe, and North America, for example, even the slowest cities in the top 10 saw measured speeds in excess of 10 Mbps.  Other trends revealed at the city level show that Slovakia, for example, has four of the top 10 fastest cities in Europe, with average speeds between 11-14 Mbps.  Brazil has four of the top 10 fastest cities in South America, with average speeds between 1.6-1.9 Mbps.

Global Average Connection Speeds

The majority of countries within the top 10 (based on average measured connection speed) saw average connection speeds increase on a quarter-over-quarter basis.  Globally, the average connection speed increased 18 percent to 1.7 Mbps – a level consistent with the first quarter of 2009.  Among the top 10 countries, seven of them saw flat to higher average connection speeds in the third quarter.

Romania, Sweden, and the Czech Republic all saw quarterly declines in their average connection speeds, though they all maintained positive yearly growth.  The United States (ranking 18th overall), on the other hand, saw a small quarterly gain in average connection speeds, increasing to 3.9 Mbps, but declined slightly from a year-over-year perspective.

Also during the third quarter, 103 of the 226 countries measured had average connection speeds below 1 Mbps, down from 125 countries in the prior quarter.  Akamai also measured average connection speeds below 100 Kbps in seven countries during the third quarter – half as many as last quarter.  The lowest average connection speed seen in the third quarter was 43 Kbps on the island of Mayotte, located in the Indian Ocean between northern Madagascar and northern Mozambique.

Current highlights and historical trends for average connection speeds on a global basis can be found in Akamai’s “Broadband Adoption Trends” data visualization tool.

Attack Traffic

During the third quarter of 2009, Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 207 unique countries, nearly consistent with 201 unique countries in the second quarter.  In a shift from prior quarters, Russia and Brazil unseated the United States and China as the two largest attack traffic sources, accounting for nearly 22 percent of observed traffic in total, half as much as was seen from China and the United States in the second quarter. India ranked #9 globally, with 3.4 per cent of observed attack traffic. Akamai observed attack traffic targeted at more than 3,800 unique ports, with the top 10 ports seeing nearly 95 percent of the observed attack traffic, up from 90 percent in the second quarter.

Internet Connectivity

In the third quarter of 2009, slightly more than 444 million unique IP addresses, from 226 countries, connected to the Akamai network – a 4.5 percent increase over the second quarter of 2009, and a 17 percent increase over the same quarter a year ago.  For the sixth consecutive quarter, the United States and China continued to account for nearly 40 percent of the observed IP addresses.  The Top 10 countries continued to remain the same quarter-over-quarter, although Brazil moved up one spot (passing Spain to move into the ninth spot).