India’s internet speed up 20 percent.

India’s internet speed up 20 percent: Akamai Technologies report
India's growth in average internet speed grew more than 20%, but lagged far behind other Asia Pacific countries like South Korea (15.7Mbps) and Japan (10.9), according to Akamai Technologies’ first quarter, 2012 State of the Internet report. The report says that the peak internet speed in the country stood at 6.9Mbps, far behind global leader Hong Kong's 49.3Mbps Only 1.2% of connections in India have a speed of over 4Mbps, the new standard for broadband. This, however, represents an 85% increase in adoption rate in broadband speed. When it comes to average connection speeds, all of the top 10 countries experienced positive year-over-year changes in average connection speeds.  Globally, a total of 125 countries experienced year over year increases and only 10 countries that qualified for inclusion saw declines in connection speeds.  The global average connection speed in the first quarter was 2.6 Mbps. Once again, South Korea (15.7 Mbps) featured the fastest average connection speed. Countries/regions rounding out the top 5 included Japan (10.9 Mbps), Hong Kong (9.3 Mbps), the Netherlands (8.8 Mbps) and Latvia (8.8 Mbps). Year over year, the global average peak connection speed increased by 25 percent, and increases were also seen across all of the top 10 countries.  Globally, nearly 130 qualifying countries saw year-over-year increases in average connection speeds, ranging from 3.8 percent growth in Pakistan (to 5.9 Mbps) to a 213 percent jump in Libya (to 3.8 Mbps).  Only five countries saw a yearly decline in average peak connection speed, with the greatest loss in Tanzania, which dropped 21 percent (to 5.1 Mbps). In the first quarter, Hong Kong took the top spot for average peak connection speed (49.3 Mbps), dropping South Korea (47.8) to second place. The remaining top 5 included Japan (39.5 Mbps), Romania (38.8 Mbps) and Latvia (33.5 Mbps). Mobile Connection Speeds In the first quarter of 2012 Akamai found that a mobile provider in Germany delivered the fastest average connection speed at slightly less than 6 Mbps. Of all mobile operators tracked, five had an average connection speed of greater than 4 Mbps, while 65 mobile operators had average connection speeds greater than 1 Mbps.  Only three providers had average connection speeds below 500 kbps. When looking at peak connection speeds for the mobile providers worldwide for which Akamai analyzed data, a provider in Hong Kong offered the highest average peak connection speed of 32.2 Mbps. A German provider came in a close second at 31.2 Mbps. Overall, six mobile operators had average peak connection speeds of greater than 20 Mbps, double the number of the previous quarter.  31 providers had average peak connection speeds above 10 Mbps and all providers had average peak connection speeds above 2 Mbps. Global Internet Penetration More than 666 million unique IP addresses from 238 countries and regions around the world connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform in the first quarter of 2012. This represents a six percent increase when compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 and almost a 14 percent increase versus the first quarter of 2011. The unique IP address count across the top 10 connecting countries represented nearly 66 percent of the global figure, a concentration level approximately one percent lower than in the fourth quarter of 2011. When looking at year-over-year changes in IP address connections, China, Brazil, Italy, and Russia all once again maintained growth rates in excess of 20 percent. Following the World IPv6 Launch in June, where a number of organizations permanently “turned on” IPv6 support for their web sites, Akamai anticipates beginning to see a greater number of IPv6 connections.  This will also be driven by providers rolling out native IPv6 connectivity to their subscribers, and greater availability of popular content over IPv6.   Attack Traffic and Top Ports Attacked Akamai maintains a distributed set of agents deployed across the Internet that monitor attack traffic.  Based on 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.  In the first quarter of 2012, more than 42 percent of observed attack traffic originated in the Asia Pacific/Oceania region; Europe originated approximately 35 percent; North and South America were responsible for a combined 21 percent; and just under 1.5 percent came from Africa. When examining attack traffic on an individual source country basis, Akamai saw quarterly growth in the percentage of observed attack traffic from China (16 percent and number one on the top 10), the United States (11 percent), Russia (seven percent), Turkey (5.7 percent), Romania (three percent), and Germany (1.9 percent).  However, Taiwan (5.3 percent), South Korea (4.3 percent), and Brazil (four percent) all saw percentages drop relative to the prior quarter. Attack traffic concentration among the top 10 ports increased significantly in the first quarter of 2012, with these ports responsible for 77 percent of observed attacks, up from 62 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011.  It appears that this increase was largely attributable to significant growth in the percentage of attacks targeting Port 445 (42 percent of observed attack traffic), after seeing declines over the prior several quarters.  As has been noted in past reports, Port 445 is associated with the Conficker worm. Taking geography into consideration, Akamai found that Port 445 was the most attacked port in seven of the top 10 countries generating attack traffic.  Port 23 (Telnet) continued to be the most targeted port in South Korea and Turkey, while Port 1433 (Microsoft SQL Server) remained the top target for observed attacks originating in China.  In the United States, Germany, and Brazil, Port 80 (HTTP) was the second-most targeted port, likely indicating that attackers were searching for the presence of Web-based applications with known vulnerabilities that could be exploited to gain control of the system or to install malware.  In Russia and Taiwan, Port 23 was the second-most targeted port, likely indicating attempts to exploit default or common passwords that would allow attackers to gain access to a system.