Volume 3, Number 1 The State of the Internet · 2010-08-09 · Each quarter, Akamai publishes a “State of the Internet” report. This report includes data gathered from across

1st Quarter, 2010 Report

Volume 3, Number 1

The State of the Internet

The “spinning globe” featured in the Akamai NOCC represents where Akamai servers are located and how much traffic they are seeing.

Executive SummaryEach quarter, Akamai publishes a “State of the Internet” report. This report includes data gathered from across Akamai’s global server network about attack traffic, broadband adoption, and mobile connectivity, as well as trends seen in this data over time. Periodically, it also aggregates publicly available news and information about notable events seen throughout the quarter, including Denial of Service attacks, Web site hacks, and network events, including outages and new connections.

During the first quarter of 2010, Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 198 unique countries around the world. Russia remained the top attack traffic source, accounting for 12% of observed attack traffic in total. The United States and China once again held the second and third place spots respectively, accounting for nearly 20% of observed attack traffic. Attack traffic concentration returned to levels seen in the third quarter of 2009, with the top 10 ports once again seeing nearly 95% of the observed attack traffic. We noted that when aggregat-ed at a continental level, Europe was responsible for the highest percentage of attacks seen in the first quarter, both overall, and for attacks observed to have originated in known mobile networks. Port 445 continued to be the most highly targeted port for observed attacks, again both overall and for attack traffic originating in known mobile networks.

Akamai observed a 7.2% increase (from the fourth quarter of 2009) globally in the number of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai’s network. From a global connection speed perspective, South Korea continued to have the highest level of “high broadband” (>5 Mbps) connectivity. South Korea also maintained the highest average connection speed, at 12 Mbps, and recorded the highest average maximum connection speed, at 33 Mbps, where the per-IP address maximum connection speed was averaged across IP addresses from each country. Cities in South Korea also held many of the top spots in the rankings of highest average and average maximum1 connection speeds by city. In the United States, Delaware remained in the top position, with 71% of connections to Akamai occurring at 5 Mbps or greater. Delaware also maintained the highest average connection speed in the United States, increasing to 7.6 Mbps, and recorded the highest average maximum1 connection speed across the United States, at 25 Mbps.

In the first quarter of 2010, average measured connection speeds on mobile network providers around the world ranged from 7.2 Mbps, down to 105 Kbps – both were observed on mobile providers in Slovakia. Of the 109 mobile network providers listed in the report, 35 achieved average connection speeds above 1 Mbps. Average maximum1 connection speeds on mobile providers around the world ranged from over 20 Mbps down to just over 400 Kbps. Of the 109 listed providers, 83 achieved average maximum1 speeds greater than the 2 Mbps broadband threshold, 33 achieved average maximum1 speeds greater than the 5 Mbps high broadband threshold, and six achieved average maximum1 speeds greater than 10 Mbps.

4 © 2010 Akamai Technologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved

INTRODUCTION 5

SECTION 2: SECURITY 6

2.1 Attack Traffic, Top Originating Countries 6

2.2 Attack Traffic, Top Ports 7

SECTION 3: INTERNET PENETRATION 8

SECTION 4: GEOGRAPHY– GLOBAL 9

4.1 Global Average Connection Speeds 10

4.2 Global Average Connection Speeds, City View 11

4.3 Global Average Maximum Connection Speeds 13

4.4 Global Average Maximum Connection Speeds, City View 14

4.5 Global High Broadband Connectivity 16

4.6 Global High Broadband Connectivity: Speed Distribution 17

4.7 Global Broadband Connectivity 18

4.8 Global Narrowband Connectivity 19

SECTION 5: GEOGRAPHY–UNITED STATES 20

5.1 United States Average Connection Speeds 20

5.2 United States Average Connection Speeds, City View 21

5.3 United States Average Maximum Connection Speeds 21

5.4 United States Average Maximum Connection Speeds, City View 22

5.5 United States High Broadband Connectivity 22

5.6 United States High Broadband Connectivity: Speed Distribution 23

5.7 United States Broadband Connectivity 24

5.8 United States Narrowband Connectivity 24

SECTION 6: MOBILE 25

SECTION 7: APPENDIX 28

SECTION 8: ENDNOTES 29

Table of Contents

5© 2010 Akamai Technologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved

IntroductionAkamai’s globally distributed network of servers allows us to gather massive amounts of information on many metrics, including connection speeds, attack traffic, and network connectivity/availability/latency problems, as well as traffic patterns on leading Web sites.

In the first quarter of 2010, observed attack traffic continued to target a relatively consistent set of ports, and attacks targeting port 445 continued to be responsible for an overwhelming percentage of the observed attacks, both overall, and for attacks observed to be originating in known mobile networks. Russia remained the top source of observed attack traffic, followed closely by the United States – in aggregate, the two countries were responsible for 22% of observed attack traffic, with the balance originating in a long tail of 196 more countries/regions. Aggregated at a continental level, Europe is responsible for the highest percentages of observed attacks, both overall, and for attacks observed to be originating in known mobile networks.

Akamai noted accelerated quarterly growth in the global observed unique IP count in the first quarter of 2010, which was up over 7% from the prior quarter, to over 487 million unique IP addresses making requests to Akamai. Quarterly trending in global average connection speeds was mixed during the first quarter, though quarterly trending in average maximum1 connection speeds was generally positive. Given that data from known mobile networks was removed from the data set used to calculate connection speed metrics, more countries than expected showed declining quarterly levels of high broadband and broadband adoption during the first quarter, though we believe that this may be related to the increased consumption of rate-limited streams delivered over HTTP.2 From a year-over-year perspective, trending was more generally positive for both metrics. Rates of narrowband adoption also continued to show surprising levels of growth on a global basis.

In the United States, Delaware continued to maintain its position as the state with the strongest connection speed metrics, placing first for average connection speed (7.6 Mbps) and average maximum1 connection speed (25 Mbps), as well as high broadband (71%) and broadband (97%) adoption.

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, and also in response to multiple inquiries for such data, Akamai has begun publishing insights into metrics collected from connections to Akamai that have been identified as coming from networks associated with mobile providers. During the first quarter of 2010, average measured connection speeds on mobile network providers around the world ranged from 7.2 Mbps, down to 105 Kbps – both were observed on mobile providers in Slovakia. Average maximum1 connection speeds on mobile providers around the world ranged from over 20 Mbps down to just over 400 Kbps. Consumption of content from Akamai by users on known mobile networks ranged from 9.5 GB per unique IP address per month down to just 11 MB per unique IP address per month.


2.1 Attack Traffic, Top Originating CountriesDuring the first quarter of 2010, Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 198 countries, the same as in the fourth quarter of 2009. For the third consecutive quarter, Russia held the top spot, originating 12% of observed attack traffic, as shown in Figure 1. The United States remained in second place though the portion of global observed attack traffic the country generated declined from 12% to 10% quarter over quarter. India and Argentina dropped out of the top 10 in the first quarter (to 13th and 11th places, respectively), while Japan and Poland moved into the top 10 (after ranking 11th and 12th respectively in the fourth quarter of 2009). Attack concentration among the top 10 countries declined slightly from the prior quarter, accounting for 61% of observed attacks.

Aggregating the observed attack traffic at a continental level, we find that Europe is far and away responsible for the largest percentage of attacks seen in the first quarter, as shown in Figure 2. In addition, in aggregating observed attack traffic that originated from known mobile networks, as shown in Figure 3, we find that the largest percentage of it (approximately half) appears to have come from European mobile networks, followed by nearly a third of it from mobile networks across South America. Given the ports targeted by attacks identified as coming from mobile networks, and the similarity to the overall target port list, we believe that this attack traffic is likely being generated by infected PC-type clients connecting to wire-less networks through mobile broadband connection technologies, and not by infected smartphones or similar mobile devices.

SECTION 2:

Security

Akamai maintains a distributed set of agents deployed across the Internet that serve to monitor 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. (Ports are network layer protocol identifiers.) This section, provides insight into Internet attack traffic, as observed and measured by Akamai, during the first quarter of 2010. While some quarter-over-quarter trending may be discussed, it is expected that both the top countries and top ports will experience some change on a quarterly basis.

Figure 1: Attack Traffic, Top Originating Countries/Regions

1 Russia 12% 13%2 United States 10% 12%3 China 9.1% 7.5%4 Taiwan 6.1% 5.5%5 Brazil 6.0% 6.4%6 Italy 4.4% 4.5%7 Germany 3.9% 4.4%8 Romania 3.2% 3.0%9 Japan 2.9% 2.9%10 Poland 2.4% 2.2%– Other 39% 37%

Q4 ‘09 %% TrafficCountry/Region

42

107 8

1

5

3

6

9


2.2 Attack Traffic, Top PortsAttack concentration among the top 10 targeted ports increased quarter over quarter, with the top 10 ports responsible for just under 95% of observed attacks (up from just under 92% in the fourth quarter of 2009). As usual, port 445 was the most targeted port, once again targeted by 74% of observed attacks. In looking at the target port distribution across the top 10 countries,

the concentration of attacks targeted at this port varies widely, ranging from 95% in Romania to just over 50% in the United States. Elsewhere among the top 10, SMTP (port 25) was replaced in the list by SOCKS Proxy (port 1080), which moved up from 14th place in the fourth quarter of 2009.

In reviewing observed attack traffic originating in known mobile networks, Port 445 was, for most network providers, far and away the most targeted port, likely indicating user populations with insufficiently patched systems running Microsoft Windows OS variants that are connecting to mobile networks, as opposed to malware running on smart-phones and similar mobile devices. Other popular targets for the first quarter included Port 135 (Microsoft-RPC), Port 139 (NetBIOS), and Port 22 (SSH).

Figure 2: Q1 2010 Observed Attack Traffic, Aggregated by Region

Africa 1%

South America

11%

North America 13%

Asia Pacific 31%

Europe 44%

Figure 3: Q1 2010 Observed Attack Traffic from Mobile Networks, Aggregated by Region

Africa 0.1%

South America 32%

North America 2.2%

Asia Pacific 16%

Europe 50%Figure 4: Attack Traffic, Top Ports

445 Microsoft-DS 74% 74%22 SSH 6.3% 5.2%139 NetBIOS 3.2% 2.8%23 Telnet 2.5% 2.5%135 Microsoft-RPC 2.5% 2.8%80 WWW 1.7% 1.5%4899 Remote Administrator 1.5% 1.1%1433 Microsoft SQL Server 1.1% 0.9%5900 VNC Server 0.9% 0.8%1080 SOCKS Proxy 0.5% 0.3%Various Other 5.6% –

Q4 ‘09 %% TrafficPort UsePort

SOCKS Proxy 0.5%

NetBIOS 3.2%

Telnet 2.5%

Microsoft-RPC 2.5%

WWW 1.7%

Remote Administrator 1.5%

Microsoft SQL Server 0.9% VNC Server 0.9%

Microsoft-DS 74%

SSH 6.3%

Other 5.6%


As shown in Figure 5, the top 10 countries remained the same quarter-over-quarter, though Brazil and Spain again exchanged places at the bottom of the list. Con-tinuing the ongoing trend, the United States and China accounted for nearly 40% of the observed IP addresses. In addition to the accelerated quarterly growth seen in the global IP address count, in comparing fourth quarter 2009 and first quarter 2010 quarterly change levels, eight of the top 10 countries also saw similarly accelerated quarterly growth in Internet penetration levels. (Germany and the United Kingdom were the two exceptions, seeing smaller quarterly changes than in the prior quarter.)

Globally, 54 countries saw a quarterly decline in IP address counts in the first quarter, though nearly two-thirds of those were places where Akamai observed just tens or hundreds of IP addresses. Concentration among the top 10 remained consistent as well, accounting for approximately 71% of the observed IP addresses for the third consecutive quarter. In looking at the “long tail,” there were 184 countries/ regions with fewer than one million unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai in the first quarter of 2010, 140 with fewer than 100,000 unique IP addresses, and 32 with fewer than 1,000 unique IP addresses. The count for 1,000 unique IP addresses remained consistent quarter-over-quarter, while the other two were down slightly.

SECTION 3:

Internet Penetration

Through a globally-deployed server network, and by virtue of the billions of requests for Web content that it services on a daily basis, Akamai has unique visibility into the levels of Internet penetration around the world. In the first quarter of 2010, over 487 million unique IP addresses, from 233 countries/regions, connected to the Akamai network – 7.2% more IP addresses than in the fourth quarter of 2009, and 16% more than in the same quarter a year ago. While the yearly change was roughly consistent with the level seen in the fourth quarter of 2009, the quarterly change was nearly 75% higher than that seen in the fourth quarter, possibly indicating accelerated growth in Internet penetration levels. Although we see approximately 487 million unique IP addresses, Akamai believes that it sees approximately one billion Web users. This is because in some cases, multiple individuals may be represented by a single IP address (or small number of IP addresses), as they access the World Wide Web through a firewall or proxy server. Conversely, individual users can have multiple IP addresses (handheld, personal/home system, business laptop, etc.).

Figure 5: Unique IP Addresses Seen By Akamai

– Global 487,618,413 7.2% 16%1 United States 129,354,234 8.1% 11%2 China 57,723,188 14% 30%3 Japan 33,220,465 3.8% 13%4 Germany 31,012,378 1.6% 8.6%5 France 22,473,570 5.1% 15%6 United Kingdom 20,114,050 1.5% 6.9%7 South Korea 16,715,485 7.2% 16%8 Canada 11,729,224 3.9% 4.1%9 Brazil 11,381,433 6.7% 23%10 Spain 11,224,801 4.8% 13%

YoY Change

QoQ Change

Q1 ‘10 Unique IP Addresses

Country/Region

1

8

4

9

23

710

5

6


The data presented within this section was collected during the first quarter of 2010 through Akamai’s globally-deployed server network and includes all countries/regions that had more than 1,000 average monthly unique IP addresses make requests to Akamai’s network during the first quarter. For purposes of classification in this report, the “broadband” data included below is for connections greater than 2 Mbps, and “high broadband” is for con-nections of 5 Mbps or greater. In contrast, the “narrow-band” data included below is for connections slower than 256 Kbps. Note that the percentage changes reflected below are not additive – they are relative to the prior quarter(s). (That is, a Q4 value of 50% and a Q1 value of 51% would be reflected here as a 2% change.) A quarter-over-quarter change is shown within the tables in several sections below in an effort to highlight general trends. A year-over-year change is also shown in some tables to illustrate longer-term trends.

As the quantity of HD-quality media increases over time, and the consumption of that media increases, end users are likely to require ever-increasing amounts of bandwidth. A connection speed of 2 Mbps is arguably sufficient for standard definition TV-quality video content, and 5 Mbps

for standard-definition DVD quality video content, while Blu-Ray (1080p) video content has a maximum video bit rate of 40 Mbps, according to the Blu-Ray FAQ.4 As we have done in prior quarters, in order to provide additional insight into where users have connection speeds that would allow them to be able to effectively consume this higher quality media, we will continue to examine how the “high broad-band” connections are distributed across speed groupings ranging from 5 to >25 Mbps. In addition, starting with this edition of the State of the Internet report, we will begin reporting average maximum1 connection speeds around the world, from a country/region, state, and city perspec-tive. This metric can provide insight into the peak speeds that users can likely expect from their Internet connections. We will also continue to look at which cities around the world have the highest average and average maximum1 connection speeds.

Finally, starting with this quarter’s State of the Internet report, traffic from known mobile network providers will be analyzed and reviewed in a separate section of the report, and this has been removed from the data set used to calculate the metrics reported in the present section.

SECTION 4:

Geography– Global

Akamai has a unique level of visibility into the connection speeds of end-user systems, and as such, of broadband adoption around the globe, by virtue of the billions of requests for Web content that it services on a daily basis through its globally-deployed server network. Because Akamai has implemented a distributed network model, deploying servers within edge networks, it can deliver content more reliably and more consistently at those speeds, in contrast to centralized competitors that rely on fewer deployments in large data centers. For more information on why this is possible, please see Akamai’s How Will The Internet Scale? White Paper3 or the video explanation at www.akamai.com/whytheedge.


4.1 Global Average Connection Speeds After a generally positive showing in Q4 2009, changes to average connection speeds are once again mixed around the world. (Readers may note that the Mbps figures below are higher than those listed in prior editions of this report, but are still reflecting quarter-over-quarter declines. As noted in the introduction to this section, traffic from known mobile providers has been removed from the data sets used to calculate this metric for Q1 2010, and the accompanying quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year changes have been calculated from this adjusted data set as well.) As shown in Figure 6, average speed increases among the top 10 countries were largely unremarkable, with Hong Kong and Denmark remaining essentially flat, and Japan, the Netherlands, and Switzer-land improving by 3.5% or less. Over the long term, year-over-year trends are more positive, however, with seven of the top 10 countries having higher average connection speeds than during the same period a year ago. The United States ranked 16th globally, managing slight half-percent increases quarter-over-quarter and year-over year. Given this, the adjusted average connec-tion speed for the fourth quarter would be just under 4.7 Mbps – nearly a full Mbps higher than the speed reported in last quarter’s report, which included traffic from mobile networks.

With traffic from known mobile networks now removed from the data set, it is not immediately clear what is causing the observed decline in average connection speeds on a global basis and in other countries. The base data set may still include usage from mobile networks not yet identified, or from network providers that are mixing mobile and fixed network traffic on a single autonomous system. Alternatively, it may point to higher usage of network-reliant applications and devices that are consuming some amount of network bandwidth in communicating with non-Akamai systems. Finally, some of this decline may be related to the delivery of video content for the 2010 Winter Olympics over the Akamai HD Network,2 as discussed in Section 4.5 below.

During the first quarter, 96 countries had average connection speeds below 1 Mbps, a level consistent with the prior quarter. Akamai measured average connection speeds below 100 Kbps in five countries in the first quarter – up from three in the fourth quarter of 2009. (Note that the slowest countries often have the smallest number of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai, so it may be the case that a few less countries fell below the 1000 unique IP address threshold in the first quarter than in the fourth quarter.) The lowest average connection speed was once again in Mayotte, at 40 Kbps, even with the prior quarter.

SECTION 4:

Geography– Global (continued)

Figure 6: Average Measured Connection Speed by Country/Region

– Global 1.7 -4.7% -1.0%1 South Korea 12 -2.3% 9.6%2 Hong Kong 9.0 – 19%3 Japan 7.9 2.5% -1.6%4 Romania 6.3 -14% 6.5%5 Latvia 6.3 -0.1% 35%6 Sweden 6.2 -0.7% -8.6%7 Netherlands 6.0 3.6% 9.6%8 Czech Republic 5.5 -6.4% 0.7%9 Denmark 5.3 0.1% 6.2%10 Switzerland 5.3 3.7% -6.1%… 16 United States 4.7 0.5% 0.5%

YoY ChangeQoQ ChangeQ1 ‘10 Avg. MbpsCountry/Region

16

6

5

4

3

2

110

8

7

9


4.2 Global Average Connection Speeds, City View For the third consecutive quarter, we are once again examining average measured connection speeds at a city level. In addition to the 50,000 unique IP addresses “filter” that was implemented last quarter for inclusion in the list, we’ve applied an additional filter for this quarter’s report. It was previously noted that cities that were home to one or more major academic institutions (colleges/universities) featured prominently within the list. To that end, for this quarter’s list, connections from known academic networks (autonomous systems) were removed from the source data set in order to mitigate the impact high-speed campus connections may have had on the overall rankings. As seen in Figure 8, this new “academic” filter has had

a significant impact on the rankings of cities within the list. The former top three cities – Berkeley (California), Chapel Hill (North Carolina), and Stanford (California) – have all disappeared from the top 100 list, with former 4th place city Masan (South Korea) moving into the top slot. The city with the highest average connection speed in the United States is now Monterey Park, CA with an average connection speed of 7.2 Mbps.

Figure 7 illustrates that Asia dominates the list, with more than half (61) of the top cities located in Japan, 12 more in South Korea, including eight of the top 10, and Hong Kong. In North America, 14 cities made it to the top 100 (12 in the United States, 2 in Canada) and in Europe, 12 cities across 6 countries reached the top 100.

Cities in Asia dominate the Global Average Connection Speeds top 100 list, with 61 located in Japan, 12 more in South Korea, and Hong Kong. Fourteen cities from North America made it into the top 100, along with 12 cities in Europe.

Figure 7: Number of Cities in top 100, Average Measured Connection Speed

Mbp

s

Japan

Swed

en

Roman

ia

German

y

South

Korea

United

State

s

Netherl

ands

Czech R

epub

lic

Norway

Canad

a

Hong K

ong

60

12

9

6

3

0


Figure 8: Average Measured Connection Speed, Top Global Cities

1 South Korea Masan 158392 South Korea Poryong 141343 South Korea Kimchon 138454 South Korea Taegu 137965 South Korea Milyang 134636 South Korea Seocho 128297 South Korea Ilsan 125008 Japan Usen 124999 Japan Tokai 1237710 South Korea Seoul 1186111 Japan Kanagawa 1154112 Japan Shimotsuma 1120613 Japan Urawa 1101714 South Korea Suwon 1073615 Japan Asahi 1067016 Japan Tochigi 1024817 Japan Marunouchi 980418 Sweden Umea 979919 Japan Ibaraki 968420 Japan Shizuoka 940221 Japan Nagoya 926222 Japan Kyoto 924923 Japan Hyogo 903824 Japan Yokohama 900125 Japan Kobe 899126 Japan Gifu 897527 South Korea Yongsan 895028 Japan Sendai 889729 Japan Nagano 888730 Norway Lyse 888731 Japan Chiba 880132 Japan Nara 863733 Japan Hodogaya 858434 Hong Kong Hong Kong 857135 Japan Wakayama 855936 Japan Fukuoka 847637 Japan Yokkaichi 841238 Japan Kagawa 837039 Japan Niho 833340 Japan Soka 830141 Japan Niigata 824842 Japan Otsu 824043 Japan Hiroshima 820944 Netherlands Wageningen 813045 South Korea Inchon 810246 Japan Hamamatsu 805947 Japan Matsuyama 805348 Japan Mito 804449 Japan Kokuryo 804250 Japan Kanazawa 7999

51 Japan Utsunomiya 788552 Japan Fukui 780153 Canada Oakville 779054 Japan Tokushima 778055 Japan Yosida 776956 Japan Hakodate 776157 Canada Victoria 775958 Germany Baden-Baden 773359 Japan Tokyo 767560 Japan Yamagata 765961 Romania Constanta 762362 Japan Yamaguchi 752163 Netherlands Groningen 746864 Japan Kochi 738865 Japan Iwaki 731666 United States Monterey Park, CA 727267 Japan Kofu 726668 Japan Okayama 723369 Japan Osaka 713570 Japan Toyama 707771 Japan Kagoshima 704472 South Korea Suyudong 703173 Japan Saga 696274 Japan Kumamoto 694375 Japan Tottori 685876 United States Riverside, CA 684577 Japan Okidate 678478 Japan Morioka 677679 United States Fairfield, CA 671980 Czech Republic Ceska 668581 United States Capitol Heights, MD 661482 Japan Miyazaki 661083 Japan Nagasaki 660284 Romania Timisoara 659985 Romania Iasi 658986 Japan Akita 655087 United States Hayward, CA 654588 Sweden Goteborg 653789 United States Walnut Creek, CA 653490 United States Staten Island, NY 651891 United States Oakland, CA 647692 United States San Mateo, CA 645293 Netherlands Joure 643794 United States Olympia, WA 642695 Japan Oita 640696 Japan Otemachi 638097 United States Boston Metro, MA 637898 Netherlands Tilburg 635299 Japan Sapporo 6317100 United States Union, NJ 6317

Q1 ‘10 Avg. Kbps Q1 ‘10 Avg. KbpsCity CityCountry/Region Country/Region

SECTION 4:



4.3 Global Average Maximum Connection SpeedsAs mentioned in the introduction to this section, new to the State of the Internet report series this quarter is a review of average maximum connection speeds. This metric represents an average of the maximum measured connection speeds across all of the unique IP addresses seen by Akamai from a particular geography. The average is used in order to mitigate the impact of unrepresenta-tive maximum measured connection speeds. In contrast to the average measured connection speed, the average maximum connection speed metric is more representative of what many end-user Internet connections are capable of. (This includes the application of so-called speed boost-ing technologies that may be implemented within the network by providers, in order to deliver faster download speeds for some larger files.) Note that data from known mobile networks has also been removed from the source data set for this metric.

As shown in Figure 9, in the first quarter of 2010, Akamai calculated an average maximum connection speed of 33 Mbps in South Korea – almost 3x the average connection speed within the country – with strong growth on a quarterly and yearly basis as well. Asia continues to lead this metric as well, with South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan taking the first three slots in the top 10 list.

European countries took six of the remaining slots, all with average maximum connection speeds over 15 Mbps, while the United States placed 8th with an average maximum connection speed of 16 Mbps. Quarterly changes among the top 10 countries were all positive, as were most of the yearly changes, with only Sweden and the United States showing slight declines. While the 4.7% quarterly decline for the global figure is reasonable, representing a slowdown of approximately 300 Kbps, the 24% yearly decline, equivalent to a 2 Mbps slowdown, is surprising. A review of the source data shows significant yearly average maximum connection speed declines in China, India, and a number of South American countries, among others. While the declines in these countries clearly influenced the overall global figure, it is not clear what drove the declines.

In looking at the average maximum speed distribution around the world, only South Korea exceeded 30 Mbps, due in no small part to the broad availability of extremely high speed Internet connectivity across the country. Three more countries/regions registered average maximum speeds in excess of 20 Mbps, while 39 others had average maximum speeds in excess of 10 Mbps. In looking at the “high broadband” threshold of 5 Mbps, 58 additional countries exceeded that. Only 12 countries saw average maximum connection speeds below 1 Mbps, including Mayotte, where the 411 Kbps average maximum speed was 10x its average speed for the first quarter.

Figure 9: Average Maximum Connection Speed by Country/Region

– Global 6.4 -4.7% -24%1 South Korea 33 15% 28%2 Hong Kong 30 15% 8.3%3 Japan 26 9.4% 6.8%4 Romania 25 1.8% 13%5 Sweden 19 3.8% -1.5%6 Latvia 19 11% 43%7 Belgium 17 8.9% 8.7%8 United States 16 6.7% -1.2%9 Portugal 16 7.8% 13%10 Bulgaria 15 32% 63%

YoY ChangeQoQ ChangeQ1 ‘10 Max. MbpsCountry/Region

8

46

3

19

10

7

2

5


4.4 Global Average Maximum Connection Speeds, City ViewFollowing the lead of Sections 4.2 and 4.3 above, starting this quarter, the State of the Internet report will also begin to review average maximum1 connection speeds at a city level. As noted in Section 4.2, connections from known academic networks (autonomous systems) were removed from the source data set in order to mitigate impact that high-speed campus connections may have had on the overall rankings. We’ve also applied a filter of 50,000 unique IP addresses for inclusion in this list.

It comes as no surprise that Japan and South Korea rule the top 10 for this metric as well, with six and four cities respectively among the top 10, as shown in Figure 11. Additionally, Figure 10 shows that Japan and South Korea also dominate the top 100 cities, with Japan holding over half (53) of the spots on the list, and South Korea taking another 11. In Europe, 8 cities across five countries are included in the top 100, with four of those cities in Romania. In North America, the United States accounts for over a quarter (27) of the entries.

When viewed at a more granular city level, the average maximum1 connection speeds tell an even better story of the availability of extremely high-speed connectivity around the world. As Figure 11 illustrates, three cities had average maximum1 connection speeds in excess of 40 Mbps, while 22 more exceeded 30 Mbps. Nearly 100 additional cities around the world had average maximum1 connection speeds above 20 Mbps, and over 360 more achieved average maximum1 connection speeds between 10 and 20 Mbps. Over 190 more surpassed the “high broadband” threshold of 5 Mbps, while over 130 fell between that level and the “broadband” threshold of 2 Mbps. Only one city (with more than 50,000 unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai in the first quarter) saw an average maximum1 connection speed below 1 Mbps – Tripoli, Libya.

SECTION 4:


Figure 10: Number of Cities in top 100, Average Maximum Connection Speed

Mbp

s

Japan

Norway

German

y

Swed

en

United

State

s

South

Korea

Roman

ia

Portu

gal

Hong K

ong

56

52

28

24

20

16

12

8

4

0


Figure 11: Average Maximum Connection Speed, Top Global Cities

1 South Korea Masan 405582 Japan Tokai 401793 Japan Marunouchi 400844 Japan Kanagawa 382395 South Korea Kimchon 379766 South Korea Taegu 374207 South Korea Poryong 370308 Japan Usen 362999 Japan Urawa 3607910 Japan Shimotsuma 3581511 South Korea Milyang 3494312 Japan Hodogaya 3421313 Romania Constanta 3413314 South Korea Seocho 3375215 Japan Tochigi 3350016 Japan Asahi 3337217 Japan Soka 3324618 Japan Nagano 3304519 South Korea Ilsan 3222620 South Korea Seoul 3209121 South Korea Suwon 3170022 Japan Chiba 3146123 Japan Fukuoka 3042424 Japan Yokohama 3013725 Japan Ibaraki 3010626 Japan Kokuryo 2974727 Japan Nagoya 2963028 Japan Kobe 2958129 South Korea Yongsan 2949930 Japan Sendai 2924331 Japan Kyoto 2914932 Japan Mito 2912933 Romania Timisoara 2867834 Romania Iasi 2843235 Japan Utsunomiya 2833236 Japan Niigata 2832437 Hong Kong Hong Kong 2812438 Japan Kagawa 2799939 Japan Gifu 2794140 Japan Yosida 2789841 Norway Lyse 2768842 Japan Yokkaichi 2765343 Japan Shizuoka 2752244 Japan Niho 2715845 Japan Wakayama 2684946 Japan Nara 2669247 South Korea Suyudong 2661148 Germany Baden-Baden 2659449 Japan Kanazawa 2651950 Japan Otsu 26404

51 Japan Hamamatsu 2626552 Japan Fukui 2614953 Japan Hakodate 2595454 Japan Iwaki 2584455 Japan Kofu 2556356 Japan Hiroshima 2528057 United States Monterey Park, CA 2525658 Japan Yamagata 2521859 Japan Tokushima 2515660 Japan Tokyo 2475261 Japan Matsuyama 2462962 United States Federal Way, WA 2462863 United States Everett, WA 2458864 United States Olympia, WA 2456465 United States Bellevue, WA 2446166 Sweden Umea 2442267 Japan Yamaguchi 2439768 United States Vancouver, WA 2411569 United States Salem, OR 2401370 Japan Osaka 2394271 Japan Hyogo 2391372 United States Hickory, NC 2387973 Romania Bucharest 2383074 United States Boston Metro, MA 2374275 Portugal Coimbra 2364276 Japan Morioka 2357277 Japan Okidate 2353378 United States Fairfield, CA 2347779 United States Beaverton, OR 2331680 Japan Toyama 2326581 Japan Sapporo 2326182 United States Hayward, CA 2310783 Japan Kochi 2291184 Japan Okayama 2284585 United States Riverside, CA 2280386 United States Capitol Heights, MD 2271787 United States Tacoma, WA 2271788 United States Oakland, CA 2264989 United States Oxford, MA 2258690 United States Walnut Creek, CA 2250991 United States Stone Mountain, GA 2249292 United States Aurora, CO 2222993 United States Union, NJ 2221094 United States San Mateo, CA 2207095 United States Romeoville, IL 2205696 Japan Akita 2195697 United States Staten Island, NY 2189898 United States Mishawaka, IN 2179699 United States Arvada, CO 21742100 United States Mount Prospect, IL 21683

Q1 ‘10 Max. Kbps Q1 ‘10 Max. KbpsCity CityCountry/Region Country/Region


SECTION 4:


4.5 Global High Broadband ConnectivityIn the first quarter of 2010, one-fifth of the connections to Akamai were at speeds greater than 5 Mbps – down slightly from the prior quarter, but a bit more than the same quarter a year ago. As shown in Figure 12, quarterly changes across the top 10 countries were mixed, though none of the changes were significant. However, for most of the top 10 countries, yearly growth in high broadband penetration was fairly strong, with seven of them see-ing yearly increases greater than 10%. (Note that traffic from known mobile networks was removed here as well, which may cause some of the metrics to differ significantly from values published in prior editions of the report.) The positive year-over-year changes are an encouraging trend across the top 10 and on a global basis. In looking at countries beyond the top 10, those showing year-over-year gains outnumbered declines by a 5:4 ratio, though there were a number of countries that saw significant yearly improvements, likely due to relatively low base levels of high broadband penetration. Similarly, many of the countries outside the top 10 that saw significant yearly declines also had relatively low base levels of high broadband penetration.

Overall, we believe that the declines seen in some regions in the first quarter may be related to the streaming of the 2010 Winter Olympics on the Akamai HD Network,5 which leverages HTTP to provide adaptive bitrate streaming, re-sulting in unmatched scale, quality and a highly interactive viewer experience. Streams for the Olympics were encoded by the broadcasters at six unique bitrates between 350 Kbps and 3.45 Mbps – all below the “high broadband” threshold of 5 Mbps, with four of the six bitrates below the “broadband” threshold of 2 Mbps. As such, because delivery of the streams would have been rate-limited to those bitrates (due to the encoding rates), this may have impacted the percentage of connections to Akamai in excess of 5 Mbps. The Akamai HD Network was first an-nounced in September 2009,6 and its growth in the first year of availability is a very positive sign, both for customer adoption of the service, as well as the continued growth of video consumption online. Similar to the impact of data from mobile networks in prior quarters, and the subse-quent filtering of such data, Akamai plans to implement similar filtering of such rate-limited content, as appropriate, from future State of the Internet data sets.

Figure 12: High Broadband Connectivity, Fastest Countries/Regions

– Global 20% -5.2% 1.5%1 South Korea 65% -7.6% 25%2 Japan 60% 0.2% 4.8%3 Romania 48% -4.5% 18%4 Hong Kong 45% -9.0% 16%5 Sweden 42% -3.7% -13%6 Latvia 41% 2.9% 75%7 Denmark 41% 0.7% 16%8 Netherlands 40% 2.6% 10%9 Canada 34% 0.9% 47%10 Belgium 33% -2.9% -1.1%… 14 United States 25% -4.3% -2.6%

YoY ChangeQoQ Change% above 5 MbpsCountry/Region

14

5

6

3

2

4

1

8

10

7

9


4.6 Global High Broadband Connectivity: Speed DistributionIn an effort to better understand the distribution of connections at speeds above 5 Mbps around the world, Akamai has done a more detailed analysis on these connections in order to publish more detailed data on the distribution of connection speeds, aggregated into 5 Mbps ‘buckets,’ as seen in Figure 13.

In looking back at the analysis published in the 1st Quarter, 2009 State of the Internet report, we noted that it would be interesting to see if the percentage of connections over 25 Mbps in South Korea continued to grow. A year later, we observe that while this percent-age has declined slightly (12% to 11%), the percentages

in the other buckets have increased. For the United States, these speed distributions have remained essentially flat, as compared to those published in the 1st Quarter, 2009 State of the Internet report.

We expect that, on a global basis, as the adoption and rollout of DOCSIS 3.0 technology by cable Internet providers,7 as well as other FTTH initiatives by telecom providers,8 become more widespread the percentage of connections in higher speed ‘buckets’ will grow over time. The average maximum1 connection speed data presented above demonstrate that these very high speed connections are certainly available in some areas, but they need to be made more widely available, and priced at levels that more subscribers will find affordable.

Figure 13: High Broadband Connectivity, Distribution of Speeds

1 South Korea 65% 28% 14% 7.7% 4.7% 11%2 Japan 60% 34% 16% 5.4% 2.1% 2.2%3 Romania 48% 33% 8.9% 2.6% 1.1% 1.6%4 Hong Kong 45% 23% 7.0% 4.2% 3.0% 7.4%5 Sweden 42% 29% 6.9% 2.8% 1.4% 2.5%6 Latvia 41% 28% 6.6% 2.5% 1.2% 2.3%7 Denmark 41% 35% 3.9% 0.9% 0.4% 0.7%8 Netherlands 40% 31% 5.7% 1.4% 0.6% 1.5%9 Canada 34% 28% 3.7% 0.8% 0.4% 0.8%10 Belgium 33% 31% 1.3% 0.2% 0.1% 0.3%… 14 United States 25% 20% 2.7% 0.9% 0.4% 0.8%

10–15 Mbps >25 Mbps5–10 Mbps 20–25 Mbps% above 5 Mbps 15–20 MbpsCountry/Region

We expect that, on a global basis, as the adoption and rollout of DOCSIS 3.0 technology by cable Internet providers, as well as other FTTH initiatives by telecom providers, become more widespread the percentage of connections in higher speed ‘buckets’ will grow over time.


4.7 Global Broadband ConnectivitySimilar to what was noted in Section 4.5 above, we believe that the rate-limited delivery of streaming content for the 2010 Olympics over the Akamai HD Network2 may have impacted the quarterly and yearly changes for global broadband connectivity globally and in selected countries around the world, as shown in Figure 14. In addition, as was noted previously, data from known mobile networks was removed from the source data set for this metric.

Having said that, quarterly changes among the top 10 countries were mixed, though the yearly changes, on the whole, were certainly more positive. Of interest is Monaco taking the top slot for global broadband,

pushing Switzerland into second place. While Monaco certainly has an impressive rate of broadband adoption, it is derived from a much smaller sample set than the balance of countries among the top 10 – it had fewer than 20,000 unique IP addresses that connected to Akamai at speeds above 2 Mbps, while other countries in the top 10 had hundreds of thousands or millions of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai at those speeds, so its ranking must be considered in that light.

Overall, broadband adoption around the world continues to be strong and increasing. In the first quarter of 2010, 50 countries/regions had broadband adoption levels in excess of 50% – this is up from 45 countries/regions in the first quarter of 2009, and just 27 in the first quarter of 2008.

Figure 14: Broadband Connectivity, Fast Countries/Regions

– Global 53% -3.6% -4.3%1 Monaco 92% 1.5% 7.5%2 Switzerland 91% -0.3% –3 Hong Kong 90% -1.4% 2.9%4 South Korea 89% -3.2% 7.9%5 Bulgaria 89% 5.1% 19%6 Latvia 88% 2.1% 40%7 Denmark 87% -0.9% 2.9%8 Japan 87% -1.6% -2.7%9 Belgium 87% -2.6% -3.5%10 Slovakia 86% -1.4% 4.2%… 41 United States 56% -3.3% -9.6%

YoY ChangeQoQ Change% above 2 MbpsCountry/Region

41

6

5

8

3

42

1

9

107

SECTION 4:


Analysts at research firm Point Topic have estimated that emerging countries, including the BRICs, as well as others in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and South America, will be the main driver of broadband growth over the next five years, with a 14% annual growth rate in the number of connections. By 2014 they will account for over 320 million connections, 43% of the projected world total of 740 million by that time. [http://point-topic.com/content/dslanalysis/BBAfore100301.htm]


4.8 Global Narrowband ConnectivityIn looking at narrowband connectivity, in contrast to the high broadband and broadband rankings, quarterly and yearly declines are considered to be a positive trend, as it likely indicates that higher speed connectivity is becoming more widely available and more widely adopted. However, while broadband adoption continues to increase in many countries around the world, many other countries are still stuck with low-speed Internet connections, with large percentages of their connections to Akamai occurring at speeds below 256 Kbps. While data from known mobile network providers was removed from the data set used to calculate the metrics reported in this section, it appears that this did not have a significant impact among the

world’s slowest countries, as the data in Figure 15 illustrates, with many of the countries in the top 10 seeing quarterly increases in levels of narrowband connectivity, and a yearly increase across all. However, none of the top 10 countries reported more than 6,000 unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai at narrowband rates (and none with more than 7,800 unique IP addresses overall), which ultimately means that small shifts in IP address counts can equate to large quarterly or yearly changes. Among countries registering hundreds of thousands or millions of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai at narrowband speeds, both quar-terly and yearly changes were mixed, with large percentage increases seen in China and several countries in South America and Europe.

Figure 15: Narrowband Connectivity, Slowest Countries/Regions

– Global 5.2% 18% 17%1 Mayotte 99% -0.4% 21%2 Wallis And Futuna 98% 1.2% 39%3 Equatorial Guinea 98% 7.6% 49%4 Cook Islands 96% 7.7% 88%5 Cuba 95% 0.4% 31%6 Vanuatu 94% 7.3% 25%7 Guyana 93% -2.6% 48%8 Ethiopia 93% 1.3% 29%9 Congo 92% 9.4% 74%10 Rwanda 92% 14% 24%… 118 United States 4.3% -4.8% 5.7%

YoY Change

QoQ Change

% below 256 Kbps

Country/Region

118 3

5

4 1

8

2

6

7 9

10


5.1 United States Average Connection SpeedsThe overall average connection speed for the United States as a whole in the first quarter of 2009 was 4.7 Mbps. This was exceeded by 22 states, including those in the top 10, as shown in Figure 16. Across the country and within the top 10, most quarterly fluctuations were comparatively minor, though Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska did show impressive quarterly increases,

SECTION 5:

Geography– United States

In prior editions of the State of the Internet report, metrics for the United States were incorporated into the overall global metrics section. Starting with this edition of the report, the metrics for specific geographic regions will now be presented within their own section. The metrics for the United States presented here are based on a subset of the data used for Section 4, and are subject to the same thresholds and filters discussed within the prior section. (The subset used for this section includes connections identified as coming from networks located in the United States, based on classification by Akamai’s EdgeScape9 geolocation tool.)

Figure 16: Average Measured Connection Speed by State

1 Delaware 7.6 -2.0% 4.2%2 District Of Columbia 5.9 -2.3% 3.6%3 Massachusetts 5.9 2.2% 2.5%4 New Hampshire 5.8 3.9% -10%5 Rhode Island 5.6 3.4% 1.9%6 Maryland 5.6 -1.1% 1.6%7 Utah 5.6 0.6% -14%8 Vermont 5.4 -8.2% -3.5%9 New York 5.4 -1.8% -6.3%10 Connecticut 5.4 0.2% 3.6%

YoY Change

QoQ Change

Q1 ‘10 Avg. Mbps

State

2

1

510

39

8 4

6

7

gaining 37%, 15%, and 11% respectively. Looking at year-over-year changes, five states showed average speed increases of 10% or more, while seven states showed aver-age speed declines of 10% or greater. Alaska continued to be the state with the lowest average connection speed, at 2.7 Mbps, though this is up 30% year-over-year, which is certainly a positive sign.

California does have strong broadband connectivity in some locations, although it ranks 11th among all of the U.S states. Among the more than 250 cities ranked across the United States, over 25 of them were in California.


over 25 of them were in California. While New York only had a single city within the top 10, 16 cities appeared in the overall ranking. Five more states (Texas, New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, and Virginia) had 10 or more cities in the over-all list, and over half of the cities listed were concentrated across just 10 states.

5.3 United States Average Maximum Connection SpeedsThe overall average maximum1 connection speed calculated by Akamai for the United States as a whole was 16 Mbps for the first quarter of 2010. This was exceeded by half of the states within the country, including all of those in the top 10, as shown in Figure 18. For this metric, Idaho ranked lowest, with an average maximum1 connection speed of 9.3 Mbps, up 6.6% quarter-over-quarter. All but three states (Wyoming, Arkansas, and Idaho) recorded average maximum1 connection speeds above 10 Mbps for the first quarter. Quarterly trending of average maximum1 connec-tion speeds within the United States was very strong, with only Mississippi and South Dakota heading lower during the first quarter, and only just barely, at that. Seven states saw quarterly increases of 10% of more as well. However, the picture for year-over-year trends was not as bright, with only 17 states and the District of Columbia recording yearly increases, ranging from Colorado at 0.4% to South Dakota at 28%, and 32 states declining year-over year, from Nebraska’s 0.1% loss to Idaho’s 17% loss. (Ohio was flat year-over-year.)

Figure 17: Average Measured Connection Speed, Top United States Cities by Speed

1 Monterey Park, CA 72722 Riverside, CA 68453 Fairfield, CA 67194 Capitol Heights, MD 66145 Hayward, CA 65456 Walnut Creek, CA 65347 Staten Island, NY 65188 Oakland, CA 64769 San Mateo, CA 645210 Olympia, WA 6426

Q1 ‘10 Avg. KbpsCity

Figure 18: Average Maximum Connection Speed by State

1 Delaware 25 3.4% -5.8%2 Rhode Island 21 7.9% 8.7%3 New Hampshire 21 9.4% -3.4%4 Hawaii 20 3.2% 27%5 Massachusetts 20 7.6% 4.1%6 District Of Columbia 20 3.0% 3.7%7 Vermont 19 0.3% -2.8%8 California 19 15% 4.4%9 Maryland 18 8.5% -0.8%10 New York 18 5.6% -7.0%

YoY Change

QoQ Change

Q1 ‘10 Max. Mbps

State

6

1

25

10 7 3

98

4

5.2 United States Average Connection Speeds, City ViewAs with the Global Average Connection Speeds, City View presented in Section 4.2, connections from known academic networks were removed from the data set to mitigate the impact that high-speed campus connections may have had on the overall rankings. In addition, the 50,000 unique IP address filter was used for this view as well. In reviewing the top 10 cities in the United States with the highest average connection speeds, as shown in Figure 17, it appears that California does have strong broadband connectivity in some locations, although it ranks 11th among all of the U.S states. Among the more than 250 cities ranked across the United States,


SECTION 5:

Geography– United States (continued)

5.4 United States Average Maximum Connection Speeds, City ViewWhile California had a strong showing among the top 10 cities for average connection speeds within the United States, the state, on average, was largely displaced by its neighbors to the north when looking at average maximum1 connection speeds. Among the top 10 cities in the United States with the highest average maximum1 connection speeds, five of the cities are in Washington, and one is in Oregon, as shown in Figure 19. Concentra-tion of the ranked cities across all of the states was identical to that seen for average connection speeds, as discussed in Section 5.2. Interestingly, for the lists of both average and average maximum connection speeds, only Delaware, North Dakota, and Vermont did not have any cities on either list. (Given their relative rankings on a state level, this likely indicates that cities within those states fell below the 50,000 unique IP address threshold, thereby eliminating them from consideration for this metric.)

5.5 United States High Broadband ConnectivityIn the first quarter of 2010, Delaware broke its multi-quarter streak of posting significant double-digit quarterly gains in the percentage of connections to Akamai at speeds above 5 Mbps, delivering a 2.1% quarterly decline, ending the quarter with 71% high broadband adoption. Four other states among the top 10 also saw decreasing levels of high broadband adoption quarter-over-quarter, while four states and the District of Columbia saw high broadband adoption levels grow in the first quarter, as highlighted in Figure 20.

Across the whole country, 22 states and the District of Columbia saw quarter-over-quarter increases, from Montana’s doubling to 24% to Virginia’s comparatively small 1.2% growth. Quarterly declines in the remaining 28 states ranged from Alabama’s 1.8% loss to Nevada’s 29% drop. Yearly changes were more balanced, with 25 states increasing, and 25 states and the District of Columbia declining. Alaska and South Dakota posted the highest levels of yearly growth, increasing 186% and 116% respectively. As noted previously, we believe that the declines observed during the first quarter may be due, at least in part, to delivery of streaming video for the 2010 Winter Olympics over the Akamai HD Network.2

Figure 19: Average Maximum Connection Speed, Top United States Cities by Speed

1 Monterey Park, CA 252562 Federal Way, WA 246283 Everett, WA 245884 Olympia, WA 245645 Bellevue, WA 244616 Vancouver, WA 241157 Salem, OR 240138 Hickory, NC 238799 Boston Metro, MA 2374210 Fairfield, CA 23477

Q1 ‘10 Max. KbpsCity

Leichtman Research Group, Inc. found that the nineteen largest cable and telephone providers in the US – representing about 93% of the market – acquired over 1.4 million net addition-al high-speed Internet subscribers in the first quarter of 2010, growing to over 73 million subscribers in total. [http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/051210release.html]


5.6 United States High Broadband Connectivity: Speed DistributionAlthough 9 of the top 10 states with the highest levels of high broadband adoption are on the East Coast (Indiana the lone exception), when we look at the states with highest percentages of connections to Akamai at speeds over 25 Mbps, we find that only three East Coast states are among the top 10 for that sub-metric. With at 3.2% of connections to Akamai over 5 Mbps, Utah is well ahead of other states, including those listed in Fig-ure 21. In addition, Delaware is well ahead overall, with high broadband adoption a full 17% higher than second place New Hampshire, and double ninth place Indiana.

In comparing the speed distributions to the same period a year earlier, we find very similar patterns, with the majority of high broadband connections measuring between 5-10 Mbps, with the next largest grouping

between 10-15 Mbps. Similar to the first quarter of 2009, the remaining faster ‘buckets’ struggled to achieve even 3% of connections in the first quarter of 2010.

The adoption and rollout of DOCSIS 3.0 technology by cable Internet providers continued apace in the first quarter,10 and Google announced11 an initiative to “build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States” with 1 Gbps FTTH connections, ultimately placing them in competition with incumbent telecom providers. As these initiatives become more widespread, we expect that the percentage of connections in higher speed ‘buckets’ will grow over time. The average maximum1 connection speed data presented above demonstrates that these very high speed connections are certainly available in some areas, but they need to be made more widely available, and priced at levels that more subscribers will find affordable.

Figure 20: High Broadband Connectivity, Fastest U.S. States

1 Delaware 71% -2.1% 15%2 New Hampshire 54% 4.7% -7.7%3 Massachusetts 47% 3.0% 7.2%4 Connecticut 42% 2.7% 4.2%5 District Of Columbia 40% 2.1% -0.4%6 New York 40% -10% -17%7 Vermont 39% -14% -17%8 Rhode Island 38% 13% -7.9%9 Indiana 35% -5.4% 21%10 Pennsylvania 35% -9.2% -0.7%

YoY Change

QoQ Change

% above 5 Mbps

State

5

1

84

36

107 2

9

Figure 21: High Broadband Connectivity, Distribution of Speeds

– United States 25% 20% 2.7% 0.9% 0.4% 0.8%1 Delaware 71% 57% 8.6% 2.9% 1.2% 1.5%2 New Hampshire 54% 47% 4.6% 1.3% 0.4% 0.5%3 Massachusetts 47% 36% 5.7% 2.0% 0.9% 1.7%4 Connecticut 42% 34% 4.2% 1.6% 0.8% 1.0%5 District Of Columbia 40% 29% 5.9% 2.2% 1.1% 2.0%6 New York 40% 33% 4.5% 1.3% 0.6% 1.1%7 Vermont 39% 30% 4.8% 1.8% 0.7% 1.3%8 Rhode Island 38% 30% 4.1% 1.5% 0.7% 1.5%9 Indiana 35% 27% 3.5% 1.4% 0.8% 1.8%10 Pennsylvania 35% 29% 3.7% 1.1% 0.5% 0.7%

10–15 Mbps >25 Mbps5–10 Mbps 20–25 Mbps% above 5 Mbps 15–20 MbpsState


SECTION 5:

Geography– United States (continued)

5.7 United States Broadband ConnectivitySimilar to the trend seen in Section 5.5 for high broadband connectivity, quarterly changes across the top 10 states for broadband connectivity were mixed in the first quarter as well, although they were, by and large, more muted. Year-over-year changes among the top 10 states, as shown in Figure 22, were downward in eight of the top 10 states, with only Delaware and Rhode Island showing gains, and extremely small gains at that. In looking at the United States as a whole, however, quarterly gains and losses were evenly split, although only seven states demonstrated yearly growth in broadband adoption.

As noted previously, we believe that the declines observed during the first quarter may be due, at least in part, to delivery of streaming video for the 2010 Winter Olympics over the Akamai HD Network.2

Figure 22: Broadband Connectivity, Fast U.S. States

1 Delaware 97% -0.2% 0.3%2 New Hampshire 90% 1.4% -0.3%3 Rhode Island 85% 0.3% 0.2%4 Connecticut 83% 0.5% -1.5%5 Hawaii 82% 1.4% -0.7%6 Maine 79% -3.0% -7.8%7 Vermont 77% -7.0% -7.6%8 Michigan 76% 2.5% -0.3%9 New York 75% -4.4% -7.6%10 Massachusetts 75% 0.1% -1.1%

YoY Change

QoQ Change

% above 2 Mbps

State

1

34

10

69 7 28

5

Figure 23: Narrowband Connectivity, Slowest U.S. States

1 Alaska 8.0% -9.2% 6.6%2 New Jersey 7.9% -4.2% 0.9%3 District Of Columbia 7.4% -14% -15%4 Georgia 6.7% -19% -1.5%5 Washington 6.6% -9.1% 116%6 Missouri 6.2% -9.5% 0.5%7 Illinois 6.1% -0.5% 36%8 Iowa 5.8% -16% 1.6%9 Texas 5.3% -12% 23%10 Ohio 4.4% -15% -15%

YoY Change

QoQ Change

% below 256 Kbps

State

3

2

1

5

9 4

6

8 7 10

5.8 United States Narrowband ConnectivityIn contrast to the mixed quarterly trending for high broadband and broadband adoption levels, all of the top 10 states with the highest levels of narrowband (<256 Kbps) connections saw declines in the first quarter of 2010, as shown in Figure 23. Across the whole United States, 38 states and the District of Columbia saw lower narrowband adoption levels in the first quarter, as compared to levels at the end of 2009. Removal of traffic from known mobile networks from the source data set appears to have had the largest impact on this metric, as its impact was most evident here in prior editions of the State of the Internet report.

Unfortunately, things are not quite as positive when looking at the changes on a year-over-year basis. Of the top 10 states, seven experienced yearly increases, while across the country, 27 states saw narrowband adoption increase. Most surprising were the 466% and 116% gains seen in Nevada and Washington, respectively, especially given Washington’s strong showing in the city views for both average and average maximum1 connection speeds, as covered previously in this report.


SECTION 6:

Mobile

Building on the data presented in the State of the Internet reports for the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2009, Akamai continues to identify additional mobile networks for inclusion in the report, and we continue to expand the amount of information provided for each network. New to the State of the Internet report in the first quarter of 2010, we are including information on the average maximum1 connection speed by provider, as well as insight into the average megabytes (MB) downloaded from Akamai per month per unique IP address associated with the network. As was noted last quarter, the source data set for this section is subject to the following constraints:• A minimum of 1,000 unique IP addresses connecting

to Akamai from the network in the first quarter of 2010 was required for inclusion in the list.

• In countries where Akamai had data for multiple network providers, only the top three are listed, based on unique IP address count.

• The names of specific mobile network providers have been anonymized, and providers will be identified by a unique ID.

• Data is included only for networks where Akamai believes that the entire Autonomous System (AS) is mobile – that is, if a network provider mixes traffic from fixed/wireline (DSL, cable, etc.) connections with traffic from mobile connections on a single network identifier, that AS was not included in the source data set.

• Akamai’s EdgeScape database was used for the continental assignments.

In examining the data shown in Figure 24, we see that there is an extremely wide range in average connection speeds – oddly enough, the highest (7175 Kbps) and the lowest (105 Kbps) were both seen on providers in Slovakia. Of the 109 mobile providers listed, 14 had average connection speeds in the broadband (2 Mbps or above) range, while 35 had average measured connection speeds of 1 Mbps or more. As more providers launch HSPA+12 and HSDPA13 networks, as well as networks based on LTE and WiMAX technology, we expect that these average speeds will increase in the future. However, given the current congestion on some mobile networks, and the rapid increase in the consumption of rich media content on mobile devices, these expected increases may occur over a longer period of time.

The GSM Association reports that global Mobile Broadband connections roughly doubled during 2009 to 200 million. By the end of 2010, they estimate this will reach 342 million global connections, with 120 million in Europe, 116 million in the Asia Pacific region, and 58 million in North America. [http://www.gsmworld.com/newsroom/press-releases/2010/4621.htm]


SECTION 6:

Mobile (continued)

In examining the data on average maximum1 connection speeds, we see that the gap is even wider than that seen for average speeds, ranging from a staggering 34584 Kbps on a provider in the United Kingdom to 408 Kbps on a provider in Belgium. The Slovakian mobile provider with the highest average connection speed fared very well on the average maximum connection speed measurement as well, clocking in at 20394 Kbps. However, it must be noted that a number of mobile network providers make heavy use of mobile gateways and proxies that will result in higher average and average maximum1 speeds being calculated by Akamai, as these speeds reflect gateway/proxy-to-Akamai communications rather than mobile device-to-Akamai communications. (These top providers

may be making use of such an architecture.) Akamai is investigating methods of mitigating the impact of these gateways/proxies on the source data sets that will be used for future editions of the State of the Internet report. Having said that, average maximum1 connection speeds on mobile networks around the world were fairly strong, with 83 of the 109 listed providers achieving average maximum1 connection speeds greater than the 2 Mbps broadband threshold, 33 achieving average maximum1 connection speeds greater than the 5 Mbps high broadband threshold, and six achieving average maximum1 connection speeds greater than 10 Mbps.

Figure 24: Average and Average Maximum Connection Speed, Average Megabytes Downloaded per Month by Mobile Provider

AFRICA Egypt EG-1 394 1706 132Morocco MA-1 412 2929 447Nigeria NG-1 242 2962 199South Africa ZA-1 465 835 142ASIA China CN-1 1930 4774 147Hong Kong HK-1 2016 8581 397Hong Kong HK-2 2004 7955 260Indonesia ID-1 218 4924 9501Israel IL-1 988 5137 108Japan JP-1 946 4180 114South Korea KR-1 1495 3029 32Kuwait KW-1 909 3065 660Malaysia MY-1 267 1754 176Malaysia MY-2 872 4407 301Malaysia MY-3 531 2651 293Pakistan PK-1 635 4226 494Saudi Arabia SA-1 636 1778 90Singapore SG-2 648 5515 119Singapore SG-3 1282 5923 292Sri Lanka LK-1 765 4950 252Taiwan TW-1 1032 4332 131Taiwan TW-2 622 2539 139Thailand TH-1 661 5677 125EUROPE Austria AT-1 2553 10769 122Austria AT-2 1886 6292 1298Belgium BE-1 2311 7608 282

Belgium BE-2 901 2660 33Belgium BE-3 200 408 11Croatia HR-1 931 3567 58Czech Republic CZ-1 626 2588 69Czech Republic CZ-2 415 2024 117Czech Republic CZ-3 1320 3561 140Estonia EE-1 611 2775 174France FR-1 275 913 48France FR-2 1397 4483 630France FR-3 481 2775 161Germany DE-1 248 1036 53Germany DE-2 2507 7931 1049Greece GR-1 909 5068 237Greece GR-2 455 2581 110Hungary HU-1 1145 5315 127Hungary HU-2 1280 5037 72Ireland IE-1 1894 6983 228Ireland IE-2 1076 7331 566Ireland IE-3 978 6830 426Italy IT-1 875 4841 275Italy IT-2 1710 6056 252Italy IT-3 2783 9889 332Lithuania LT-1 1203 5516 255Lithuania LT-2 760 3205 185Moldova MD-1 730 2858 52Moldova MD-2 1269 4907 107Netherlands NL-1 803 1758 19Netherlands NL-2 1704 3536 20Norway NO-1 867 3121 67

Q1 ‘10 Avg. Kbps

Q1 ‘10 Avg. Kbps

ID IDQ1 ‘10 Max. Kbps

Q1 ‘10 Max. Kbps

Q1 ‘10 Avg. MB/month


Country/Region Country/Region

ASIA

EUROPE

AFRICA


Finally, starting this quarter, we review the average amount (MB) of data downloaded from Akamai per month per unique IP address seen from the mobile network. As Akamai serves content for a number of smartphone makers, we posited that customers of mobile carriers that supported these smartphones would see higher MB/month levels than other carriers. In an effort to validate this supposition, we surveyed the Web sites of the 20 mobile carriers with the highest recorded usage levels. (We excluded provider UK-3, which had ranked highest on the list, due to their suspected usage of a mobile gateway architecture, which inflated their calculated per IP address usage.)

Of these 20 providers, 14 (70%) of them explicitly advertised support for Apple’s iPhone family of smart-phones, while the remaining six (30%) offer services based on next-generation mobile broadband connection technologies such as WiMAX, HSPA+, or HSDPA. Of the providers where we recorded over 1000 MB/month average usage per unique IP address, we found that five of the seven providers supported the Apple iPhone.

On the other end of the spectrum, we found that for 26 mobile providers (of the 109 listed), there was less than 100 MB of data downloaded from Akamai per unique IP address per month during the first quarter of 2010.

Norway NO-2 1186 3875 70Poland PL-1 3444 10298 119Poland PL-2 750 2947 38Poland PL-3 508 2637 135Portugal PT-1 323 1331 34Romania RO-1 375 1899 68Russia RU-1 4248 13686 138Russia RU-2 586 1933 46Russia RU-3 498 1570 56Slovakia SK-1 105 418 31Slovakia SK-2 2225 6112 1472Slovakia SK-3 7175 20394 567Slovenia SI-1 1074 5514 109Spain ES-1 1102 6495 276Spain ES-2 379 2691 398Spain ES-3 701 4222 166Ukraine UA-1 175 569 35United Kingdom UK-1 1043 6647 456United Kingdom UK-2 2065 8613 496United Kingdom UK-3 3701 34584 17386North America Canada CA-1 2445 10972 4339Canada CA-2 728 1902 553El Salvador SV-1 469 2755 187El Salvador SV-2 704 4930 373El Salvador SV-3 666 3574 547Guatemala GT-1 371 1924 108Guatemala GT-2 453 3859 434

Mexico MX-2 584 3878 274Mexico MX-3 443 4149 353Netherlands Antilles AN-1 319 1699 180Nicaragua NI-1 414 2864 216Puerto Rico PR-1 2133 8618 2454United States US-1 845 1912 34United States US-2 829 2103 31United States US-3 979 2496 183Oceania Australia AU-1 658 5470 718Australia AU-3 928 3785 103Guam GU-1 378 1729 154New Caledonia NC-1 426 1730 254New Zealand NZ-2 1073 5208 289South America Argentina AR-1 233 1838 97Argentina AR-2 354 2150 138Bolivia BO-1 128 1390 149Brazil BR-1 420 2258 123Brazil BR-2 322 1853 108Chile CL-1 536 3486 371Chile CL-3 379 3442 272Colombia CO-1 403 3278 146Paraguay PY-1 144 998 87Paraguay PY-2 280 1847 241Uruguay UY-1 485 3127 195Uruguay UY-2 173 1606 78Venezuela VE-1 385 2374 1248

Q1 ‘10 Avg. Kbps

Q1 ‘10 Avg. Kbps

ID IDQ1 ‘10 Max. Kbps

Q1 ‘10 Max. Kbps



Country/Region Country/Region

NORTH AMERICA

SOUTH AMERICA

OCEANIA


EUROPE Austria 0.3% 2,230,464 3818 11108 19% 63% 1.5%Belgium 0.1% 3,159,936 4768 16509 33% 87% 1.2%Czech Republic 0.2% 1,658,849 5482 14131 31% 77% 1.2%Denmark 0.2% 2,127,420 5330 14059 41% 87% 0.7%Finland 0.1% 2,342,939 3936 10808 23% 51% 0.8%France 1.5% 22,473,570 3212 11118 9.5% 69% 0.8%Germany 3.9% 31,012,378 3877 12948 17% 80% 1.4%Greece 0.2% 2,037,975 3070 12123 5.5% 68% 1.9%Iceland 0.0% 123,362 4407 14459 20% 81% –Ireland 0.2% 1,411,789 4968 12962 11% 54% 2.4%Italy 4.4% 10,669,453 2919 10448 3.7% 66% 2.2%Luxembourg 0.0% 161,387 3134 10732 9.1% 69% 1.5%Netherlands 0.5% 52,302 5992 14459 40% 79% 1.7%Norway 0.1% 2,381,176 4951 13738 25% 69% 1.5%Portugal 0.5% 2,155,350 3983 16014 24% 78% 0.7%Spain 1.3% 11,224,801 2539 9340 4.2% 54% 1.3%Sweden 0.3% 4,146,254 6181 19209 42% 75% 1.9%Switzerland 0.2% 2,644,304 5294 14891 27% 91% 0.7%United Kingdom 1.2% 20,114,050 3812 12346 15% 78% 1.2%ASIA/PACIFIC Australia 0.3% 8,400,812 2613 9720 10% 45% 5.4%China 9.1% 57,723,188 695 2732 0.2% 3.5% 17%Hong Kong 0.3% 2,189,347 9010 29570 45% 90% 0.5%India 2.2% 3,966,687 796 4672 0.6% 4.2% 27%Japan 2.9% 33,220,465 7863 25790 60% 87% 1.5%Malaysia 0.9% 1,436,465 1067 6081 0.5% 2.8% 11%New Zealand 0.3% 1,310,127 2912 10671 7.7% 64% 6.3%Singapore 0.4% 1,721,822 2722 11173 11% 49% 3.2%South Korea 1.7% 16,715,485 12021 32708 65% 89% 0.3%Taiwan 6.1% 6,041,143 4334 14053 20% 64% 1.4%MIDDLE EAST Egypt 0.3% 1,067,623 750 4472 0.3% 4.8% 16%Israel 0.7% 1,836,778 2988 10922 4.2% 62% 0.2%Kuwait 0.1% 234,633 1392 6229 1.7% 17% 8.7%Saudi Arabia 0.6% 1,339,271 2189 7213 1.8% 49% 1.2%Sudan 0.0% 24,360 383 2185 – – 44%Syria 0.0% 88,098 3034 5911 17% 56% 21%United Arab Emirates (UAE) 0.2% 739,970 1225 5248 2.8% 13% 7.4%LATIN & SOUTH AMERICA Argentina 2.4% 3,620,142 1426 6196 0.5% 16% 8.1%Brazil 6.0% 11,381,433 1271 5043 2.0% 14% 18%Chile 0.4% 1,989,659 2202 8896 2.0% 42% 3.1%Colombia 1.2% 2,319,106 1530 6248 0.3% 22% 6.6%Mexico 0.4% 7,767,481 1278 5540 0.4% 9.2% 2.1%Peru 0.6% 616,377 1012 5852 0.5% 5.7% 3.6%Venezuela 0.3% 1,901,287 705 3217 – 0.7% 13%NORTH AMERICA Canada 1.5% 11,729,224 4796 14590 34% 80% 2.1%United States 10% 129,354,234 4684 16207 25% 56% 4.3%

Unique IP Addresses

Avg. Connection Speed (Kbps)

Max. Connection Speed (Kbps)

% Attack Traffic

% Above 5 Mbps

% Above 2 Mbps

% Below 256 Kbps

Country/Region

SECTION 7:

Appendix


1 The “average maximum connection speed” metric represents an average of the maximum measured connection speeds across all of the unique IP addresses seen by Akamai from a particular geography. The average is used in order to mitigate the impact of unrepresentative maximum measured connection speeds. In contrast to the average measured connection speed, the average maximum connection speed metric is more representative of what many end-user Internet connections are capable of. (This includes the application of so-called speed boosting technologies that may be implemented within the network by providers, in order to deliver faster download speeds for some larger files.)

2 The Akamai HD Network leverages HTTP to provide adaptive bitrate streaming. Streams for the 2010 Winter Olympics were encoded by the broadcasters at six unique bitrates between 350 Kbps and 3.45 Mbps – all below the “high broadband” threshold of 5 Mbps, with four of the six bitrates below the “broadband” threshold of 2 Mbps. As such, because the streams would have been rate-limited to those bitrates (due to the encoding rates), this may have impacted the percentage of connections to Akamai in excess of 5 Mbps. Similar to the impact of data from mobile networks in prior quarter, and the subsequent filtering of such data, Akamai plans to implement similar filtering of such rate-limited content, as appropriate, from future State of the Internet data sets.

3 http://www.akamai.com/dl/whitepapers/How_will_the_internet_scale.pdf

4 http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/

5 http://www.akamai.com/html/misc/hdnetwork.html

6 http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2009/press_092909.html

7 http://www.telegeography.com/cu/search.php?search_term=DOCSIS&Submit=Submit

8 http://www.telegeography.com/cu/search.php?search_term=FTTH&Submit=Submit

9 http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/products/edgescape.html

10 http://bit.ly/9mOWFI

11 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with-gig-our-experimental.html

12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSPA%2B

13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Downlink_Packet_Access

SECTION 8:

Endnotes

The Internet Revolution Continues…At the Fontainebleau Resort, Miami Beach

Your time will be well spent during this revolutionary event. We look forward to seeing you in Miami!

Join Akamai and more than 500 other Internet revolutionaries for the 3rd Annual Akamai Global Customer Conference.

During our three-day program, we will explore some of the recent challenges and opportunities that have taken hold and are defining how business is done online. Trends including the growth of cloud computing models for enterprise-class applications, the adoption of high definition (HD) video online, the optimization of mobile content for Internet-connected devices, the realization of secure e-commerce, and the shift of advertising dollars online to follow the migration of audiences to new media. With so many technological advancements for leveraging the Internet, as well as public and private “cloud” infrastructure, it is imperative for today’s online business leaders to have a forum to discuss these developments with peers from other leading organizations from around the globe.

Visit www.akamai.com/revolution for complete conference details, and early registration discounts!

The Akamai Difference Akamai® provides market-leading, cloud-based services for optimizing Web and mobile

content and applications, online HD video, and secure e-commerce. Combining highly-

distributed, energy-efficient computing with intelligent software, Akamai’s global platform

is transforming the cloud into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, transact

and collaborate. To learn how the world’s leading enterprises are optimizing their business

in the cloud, please visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

AcknowledgementsEDITOR: David Belson

CONTRIBUTOR: Jon Thompson

CONTRIBUTOR: Patrick Gilmore

CONTRIBUTOR: Alloysius Gideon

EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Brad Rinklin

EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Tom Leighton

Please send comments, questions, and corrections to [email protected]

Follow @akamai and @akamai_soti on

Akamai | Powering A Better Internet™

For more information, visit www.akamai.com

©2010 Akamai Technologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited. Akamai and the Akamai wave logo are registered trademarks of Akamai Technologies, Inc. Other trademarks used herein may be owned by other companies and are used for descriptive purposes only. Akamai believes that the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice.

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Documents

Volume 3, Number 1 The State of the Internet · 2010-08-09 · Each quarter, Akamai publishes a “State of the Internet” report. This report includes data gathered from across