Connectivity
The Rising Tide of Internet Speeds and Data Consumption
While superfast Internet access is still scarce, average speeds worldwide inch up, and attacks rise, too.
We hear a lot about a few standout efforts to boost Internet speeds here and there (see “When Will the Rest of Us Get Google Fiber?”). But ultimately, what’s more relevant are broad-based trends, and there’s some good news:
+ Average connection speeds globally increased 29 percent in the past year, to 3.6 megabits per second.
+ Mobile traffic increased by about 10 percent during the third quarter of 2013, and grew by 80 percent year over year.
With that comes some bad:
+ Denial-of-service attacks keep rising; the first three quarters of 2013 had already surpassed the levels of all of 2012.
+ The top three countries from which Internet attacks were launched were China at 35 percent; Indonesia at 20 percent; and the United States at 11 percent.
Those are a few highlights of the latest state of the Internet report released today from Akamai, covering the third quarter of 2013. The company, which provides cloud-based Web optimization and caching services, has also launched a new iPhone app that gives interactive access to its Internet measuring data.
