Akamai Announces Fourth Quarter 2009 State of the Internet Report

-- Report examines average measured connection speeds of the top 100 fastest cities around the world

-- Berkeley, California; Masan, South Korea; Oxford, England; and Taoyuan, Taiwan among the top 10 cities with the highest average connection speeds

-- Majority of countries continued to see increasing average connection speeds on a year-over-year basis

-- Average measured connection speeds on mobile network providers around the world ranged from 106 Kbps to 3.2 Mbps

News provided by

Akamai Technologies, Inc.

Apr 20, 2010, 06:30 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today announced the release of its 4th Quarter, 2009 State of the Internet report available for download at www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet. Leveraging information gathered from its network, the Akamai report provides insight into key Internet statistics such as origin of attack traffic and broadband connectivity levels across the globe.

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Highlights from Akamai's quarterly report follow:

100 Fastest Cities

Following the initial review published in the 3rd Quarter, 2009 State of the Internet report, Akamai once again examined the average measured connection speeds at a city level. In an effort to filter out particularly small cities that may have been included in the previous report, the fourth quarter report analyzes cities with at least 50,000 unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai. Reviewing the top 100 fastest cities around the world in the fourth quarter of 2009 reveals the following patterns:

Nearly half (48) of the top cities are in Japan, and 62 of them are in Asia
The 15 top cities that are located in Europe are spread across six countries
Over a fifth (21) of the top cities are in the United States, and 23 of them are in North America

Fastest U.S. States

Quarterly changes in average measured connection speeds within the United States were mixed in the fourth quarter. Five of the top 10 states saw a quarterly increase, and five saw a decrease. Delaware again topped the list with an average connection speed of 7.6 Mbps, a 4 percent increase year over year.

Overall, 31 states saw average connection speeds increase in the fourth quarter – up from 25 in the prior quarter. Notable gains included South Dakota's 18 percent jump to 4.5 Mbps. Fourth quarter decreases in average connection speeds were seen in 19 states and the District of Columbia, and included Virginia's 13 percent drop to 4.0 Mbps. Akamai believes that the significant decline in Virginia was likely due, in part, to increased traffic seen from lower-speed mobile connections that entered the Internet through gateways within those states.

Increased speeds year over year were seen in 29 states, with Hawaii growing 33 percent to 4.7 Mbps.

Global Average Connection Speeds

Based on average measured connection speeds around the globe, eight of the top 10 countries saw quarterly increases in connection speeds. Eight of the top 10 also had higher average measured speeds at the end of 2009 than they did a year earlier.

South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan provided the highest average measured connection speed by country. These countries were the only three to surpass 7.5 Mbps average connection speed in the fourth quarter.

During the fourth quarter, 96 countries had average connection speeds below 1 Mbps, down from 103 countries in the prior quarter. Akamai measured average connection speeds below 100 Kbps in only three countries in the fourth quarter – less than half as many as in the third quarter.

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, available at http://www.akamai.com/dv5.

Internet Connectivity

The number of unique IP addresses connecting to the Akamai network increased 4.7 percent quarter over quarter. Ending 2009 at 465 million connected unique IPs from 234 countries, the metric has grown 16 percent from the 401 million unique IP addresses observed at the end of 2008, and nearly 54 percent from the 312 million unique IP addresses observed at the end of 2007.

For the seventh consecutive quarter, the United States and China continued to account for nearly 40 percent of the observed IP addresses. Looking at the 'long tail' of IP addresses, there were 186 countries with fewer than one million unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai in the fourth quarter of 2009; 145 with fewer than 100,000 unique IP addresses; and 32 with fewer than 1,000 unique IP addresses.

In comparing the unique IPs per capita figures for countries in the fourth quarter, Norway topped the list with an Internet penetration of 49 percent. Globally, 35 countries once again had Internet penetration levels of 25 percent or greater (0.25 or more unique IPs per capita).

Mobile Connectivity

In response to the growing amount of Internet content being accessed through mobile devices, such as smartphones and laptops equipped with mobile broadband connection technologies, Akamai is publishing its second quarter of insights into metrics collected from connections to its network associated with mobile providers.

In examining the data, Akamai reports a fairly wide range in average measured connection speeds, ranging from 3.2 Mbps on an Austrian mobile provider, down to 106 Kbps on a mobile provider in Slovakia. It is important to note that connection speeds on mobile networks can vary based on a number of factors, including device distance from mobile towers, device design (internal vs. external antennae), and ground speed of the devices (use in a moving vehicle vs. stationary use), as well as wireless data standards used (LTE, HSDPA, EV-DO, etc.).

Of the 109 mobile providers analyzed in the report, more than 40 had average measured connection speeds of over 1 Mbps in the fourth quarter, while 11 had broadband-level connectivity (connections to Akamai at speeds of 2 Mbps or greater).

Attack Traffic

During the fourth quarter of 2009, Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 198 unique countries, down slightly from 207 unique countries in the third quarter. Russia remained the top attack traffic source, accounting for 13 percent of observed attack traffic in total. The United States and China returned to the second and third place spots, respectively, accounting for nearly 20 percent of observed attack traffic. Brazil moved back down into fourth place.

Akamai observed attack traffic targeted at more than 10,000 unique ports, with the top 10 ports once again seeing nearly 92 percent of the observed attack traffic. Port 445 remained the most-targeted port for the seventh consecutive quarter, and continued to be overwhelmingly responsible for the highest percentage of attacks.

About the Akamai State of the Internet report

Akamai's unique level of visibility into the connection speeds of systems issuing requests to the Akamai network has created a one-of-a-kind view into broadband adoption around the globe. Leveraging that data, Akamai's quarterly State of the Internet report identifies both the countries and U.S. states with the fastest and slowest average connection speeds exhibited by IP addresses originating from those respective geographies. To learn more, and to access the archive of past reports, please visit www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet.

To download the figures from the Q4 2009 State of the Internet, please visit:

http://wwwns.akamai.com/q409_soti_figures.zip.

The Akamai Difference

Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering video, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online. Having pioneered the content delivery market one decade ago, Akamai's services have been adopted by the world's most recognized brands across diverse industries. The alternative to centralized Web infrastructure, Akamai's global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online. Akamai has transformed the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.