Hasta La Gadget!

Akamai’s back with yet another snapshot of the state of the internet and, surprise surprise, it’s reporting that DDoS attacks were up threefold last year versus 2011. That stat’s just one slice of the sprawling cybersecurity picture painted by the company, which also ranks China as the foremost perpetrator of “observed attack traffic” in Q4 2012, numbering that country’s share at 41 percent. To put that into better perspective, consider that the number two and three offenders — the U.S. and Turkey, respectively — are responsible for a shared 15 percent of that traffic, while former Cold War enemy Russia accounts for just 4.3 percent. On a continent-by-continent basis, the majority of these attacks originated in the Asia Pacific / Oceania region (about 56 percent), with North and South America accounting for 18 percent.

On a much lighter note, global high-speed broadband adoption (defined as any speed equal or greater than 10Mbps) grew by 2.7 percent last quarter, with top honors going to South Korea where nearly half the population enjoys super fast internet access. For the mobile flipside, Akamai found that average global speeds hovered between 8Mbps to 345kbps down, with peak downlink speeds coming in at 44Mbps to 2.7Mbps. The bulk of mobile data requests sent to Akamai’s platform saw Android’s Webkit browser and Apple’s Mobile Safari come in nearly neck-and-neck at 35.3 percent and 32.6 percent. Although when you expand that to overall network traffic, Safari reigns supreme with a 58.7 percent share. If you’re keen to digest even more of these sobering statistics, we recommend you hit up the source for the full executive summary and even more infographics.

Filed under: Internet, Mobile

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Source: Akamai

If you thought world internet access speeds were facing a large-scale slowdown, you can stop fretting for now. Data from Akamai suggests that average speeds were just 2.6Mbps, but that was a healthy 14 percent improvement over the fall and a noticeable 25 percent better than early 2011. Average peak internet connection speeds surged just as much in the first quarter of this year: at 13.5Mbps, the average maximum was a 10 percent season-to-season boost and that same 25 percent versus a year before. The leaders remain Asian territories with that ideal mix of dense populations and high technology, culminating in Hong Kong’s blazing 49.3Mbps typical downlink. Akamai attributes much of the growth in peak speeds to an explosion in “high broadband” connections, where 10Mbps is the minimum — countries like Denmark, Finland, South Korea, Switzerland and the US roughly doubled their adoption of extra-fast access in the past year.

Before cheering too loudly, we’d point out that mobile speeds are still trudging along despite HSPA+ and LTE making their presences felt. The most consistent speed came from an unnamed German carrier, which neared 6Mbps; the best regular American rate was 2.5Mbps, which underscores how far even some of the most developed countries have to go. There’s also a clear gap in regular landline broadband quality if we go by the US’ own National Broadband Plan standards. Just 60 percent of US broadband is over the 4Mbps mark, putting the US at 14th in the global ranks. We’re hoping that projects like Google Fiber can raise expectations for everyone, but you can hit the source shortly to get Akamai’s full study.

Filed under: Wireless, Networking, Internet

Akamai: peak internet speeds jumped 25 percent year-to-year in Q1, Germany tops the mobile world originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Aug 2012 00:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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