State of the Internet: No Huge Surprises

Content Delivery Network Akamai is in a good position to keep an eye on the global internet, given that they’ve got a presence pretty much everywhere and huge amounts of traffic flow through their servers. That (along with the chance to advertise their own services) is why they’ve decided to start publishing a quarterly State of the Internet report. The first one, just released, covers the first quarter of 2008. Overall, the report is not surprising (if you’re a well-read web worker) though it is somewhat depressing – for example, up to 5% of all net traffic is attacks on various hosts (the majority of these originating in China and the US).

They also cover events that disrupted the net (like the long-distance cable cuts and the mess with Pakistan blocking YouTube), internet penetration, and internet speed. The US still has the most unique IP addresses, but it’s only 8th on the “unique IPs per capita” list. And despite lagging behind some other countries (like South Korea and Japan) in high-speed connectivity, the US still ranks in the top ten out of all countries worldwide. The biggest puzzler: why does Washington state, normally thought of as a high-tech area, have the highest percentage of slow connections of any state in the union?

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