Akamai State of the Internet Report: Q3 2008

Akamai is out today with their third quarter 2008 "State of the Internet" report. The report is well worth a read as it covers a variety of topics including: security, connection speeds, geography, network access, and Internet penetration. Some of the interesting stats include:

• Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 179 unique countries around the world, up nearly 30% from the second quarter count of 139 countries. China ranked first with the U.S. right behind in second.
• In the third quarter of 2008, nearly 380 million unique IP addresses connected to the Akamai network – almost ten percent more than in the second quarter.
• Delaware has the highest fast Internet connectivity with 97% over 2 Mbps. Washington D.C and Washington State had the highest level of slow Internet connections (less than 256k) at 12% each.

Here are a couple of the charts from the report.

High Broadband Connectivity: Fastest International Countries

South Korea remains in the lead but drops from 64% to 58% of connections to Akamai occurring at over 5 Mbps. South Korea is down 10% in over 5 Mbps connections this year. Japan ranked second and the U.S. drops two slots to eighth.

Slowest International Countries

For those countries on some form of broadband, here are the countries with the slowest (less than 256k) connections. Mayotte moved into first place while former leader Rwanda dropped to sixth. The U.S. comes in just over 5.8% (down from 8% of all connections at this speed – my mother is one of those 5.8% as she is still on a 56k modem.