Fourth quarter 2011 'state of the internet' report: Akamai Technologies.

Akamai Technologies recently released its Fourth Quarter, 2011 State of the Internet report. Based on data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform[TM], which serves as much as 30 percent of the world's Web traffic at any one time, the report provides insights into key global statistics such as Internet penetration, mobile traffic and data consumption, origins of attack traffic and SSL usage, and global and regional connection speeds. Marking the end of its first four years of publication, the Fourth Quarter, 2011 State of the Internet report includes a section highlighting trending data for several key categories. Compiled to show changes over time in important State of the Internet report statistics, this data and corresponding analysis provide a snapshot of just how much Internet connectivity has changed since Akamai began publishing the report in 2008.

European Highlights from Akamai's 2011 fourth quarter report:

Global Internet Penetration

In the fourth quarter of 2011, more than 628 million unique IPv4 addresses from 236 countries and regions connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform. This represents 2.1 percent more IP addresses than connected in the third quarter of 2011, and an increase of 13 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Among those countries listed in the top 10 list for the number of unique IP addresses connecting to the Akamai Intelligent Platform during the quarter, the United Kingdom represented the most significant quarter-over-quarter increase at 13 percent, increasing to more than 25 million IP addresses. Germany (rank #4), France (#6) and Italy (#9) gained 3.2 percent, 2.5 percent and 5.2 percent respectively.

Attack Traffic and Top Ports Attacked

China, at 13 percent, generated the most attack traffic observed by Akamai in Q4 2011, followed by the United States (10 percent) and Indonesia (7.6 percent). Total observed attack traffic aggregated by region reveals that Asia Pacific/Oceania generated 45 percent of attack traffic, followed by Europe at 33 percent. In an examination of attack traffic concentration among the top 10 targeted ports, the report found the top 10 targeted ports account for 65 percent of the observed attacks; Port 445 (Microsoft-DS) ended 2011 at the top of the list, being targeted by 25 percent of all observed traffic.

Average Connection Speeds

The Netherlands closed out 2011 as the European country with the highest average connection speed, once again holding the top spot with an average speed of 8.2 Mbps. Analysis of the yearly changes reveals that 19 of the 21 surveyed European countries ended 2011 with higher average connection speeds than at the end of 2010. The top gainers include Ireland (up 39 percent year-over year to 6.8 Mbps), 1 Switzerland (up 29 percent year-over-year to 7.3 Mbps) and Austria (up 28 percent year-over-year to 5.2 Mbps).

Just three countries grew less than 10 percent year-over-year: Denmark (up 7.4 percent to 5.7 Mbps), Sweden (up 9.4 percent to 5.5 Mbps) and France (up 5.1 percent to 3.7 Mbps).

100 Fastest Cities Worldwide

In the fourth quarter of 2011, analysis of the 100 fastest cities in the world, based on average connection speeds, reveals that:

* Cities in Asia Pacific held 69 spots on the Top 100 list

* Umea, Sweden was the fastest European city in the ranking (#15) at 11.3 Mbps

* Seven cities in Europe, including three in Sweden, two in Switzerland and one each in Romania and Latvia, were included in the Top 100 list

Moving to High Broadband Connectivity

In the fourth quarter of 2011, 27 percent of all connections to the Akamai Intelligent Platform were made at high broadband speeds (>5 Mbps). Three European countries - the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland - had more than half their connections to Akamai at speeds of 5 Mbps or above; Romania, the Czech Republic, and Denmark all experienced quarterly declines that dropped them below the 50 percent high broadband adoption threshold.

Nevertheless, European countries again dominate Akamai's Q4 2011 Top 10 region/country ranking for high broadband connectivity: The Netherlands, which reached 67 percent high broadband adoption, is ahead of all European nations and number two on the top 10 list, followed by Belgium (#5), Switzerland (#6), Latvia (#7), Romania (#8), Czech Republic (#9) and Denmark (#10).

Overall, broadband adoption across Europe continues to be buoyant; in Q4 2011 75 percent of the connections to Akamai in the European countries listed (with the exception of Turkey) were at speeds of 2 Mbps or over.

Mobile Connection Speeds and Data Consumption

A German mobile provider had the highest average connection speed at 5.2 Mbps, and was the only mobile provider of the 100 known global providers listed to achieve an average connection speed in the 'high broadband' (5 Mbps and above) range. An additional 27 mobile providers achieved average connection speeds in the 'broadband' (2 Mbps and above) range, while another 48 achieved average connection speeds above I Mbps in the fourth quarter.

During the fourth quarter of 2011, users on eight mobile providers consumed on average I GB or more content from the Akamai platform, while users on 75 other mobile providers around the world downloaded more than 100 MB of content from Akamai per month.

According to Ericsson, the volume of mobile data traffic doubled year-over-year, growing 28 percent between the third and fourth quarters of 2011.

Despite a fall of 25 per cent quarter-over-quarter, Italy remained the country responsible for the highest level of observed attack traffic from known mobile network providers.

UK Highlights

* 13% Quarter on Quarter rise of unique IPv4 addresses seen by Akamai at 25,383,604. Putting the UK 5th in the global list of unique IPv4 addresses seen

* No UK city features in the top 100 global cities by average connection speed table. The slowest of those cities clocked an average connection speed on 7.0Mbps

* The UK is 16th in the table measuring Average Measured Connection Speed by European Country. A speed of 4.9Mbps was recorded, up 14% year on year, but down 3.5% on the previous quarter.

* UK is 14th for Average Peak Connection Speed by European Country at 20.4Mbps, a year on year increase of 21%

* 91% of UK Broadband Connections were measured as above 2Mbps, placing it 7th in the ranking of Fast European Countries

Trends over Time

The Fourth Quarter, 20 I I State of the Internet report includes a new section that will appear annually going forward that tracks trends over time for key metrics recorded since the report's inception in 2008. Some of the trends observed include:

* On a year-over-year basis, average connection speeds in Asia increased 13 percent while Internet users in Oceania have witnessed a 132 percent increase.

* Narrowband adoption continued to decline globally with all regions reporting similar percentage declines (64-78 percent).

* Average peak connection speeds in Africa were 55 percent faster than four years ago, while users in South America have experienced a 238 percent increase.

RELATED ARTICLE: HP Speeds Cloud Application Deployment

HP have introduced technology that allows enterprises to deliver policy-based orchestration across applications, networks and users, eliminating manual configuration and enabling application deployment in minutes.

HP is collaborating with F5 to offer solutions that converge application and network orchestration. The new solutions provide single-pane-of-glass management through HP Intelligent Management Center and offer clients the ability to meet the speed and agility requirements of the cloud era.

The new solutions are based on the integration of HP Virtual Application Networks technology, which virtualizes networks and automates configuration, and F5 ADN technology, which does the same for application configuration.

"Legacy networks are static, inflexible and require too many manual steps to securely deliver new cloud applications and services to users," said Joe Skorupa, vice president and analyst, Gartner. "By moving toward an automated, policy-based management paradigm to ensure the network is optimally configured from the application to network to user, enterprises can speed application deployment considerably while reducing the potential of errors caused by manual configuration."

Deploying applications in a typical data center takes months of manual, device-by-device configuration across several layers of network infrastructure. Similarly, applications require weeks of configuring details, such as user connection profiles from both company and employee-owned devices. A typical enterprise datacenter network may require more than 250,000 manual command line entries for network implementation, and more than 100,000 application configuration steps through manual processes that are time-consuming and error-prone.

As the industry increasingly moves to cloud and other dynamic computing environments, manual command line network and application configuration processes are quickly becoming obsolete. (1)

"IT needs to move at the speed of the organization but legacy application, network and user configuration practices are barriers to achieving this necessary agility," said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager, Networking HP.

www.hp.com/golnetworking.

About the Akamai State of the Internet Report

Each quarter, Akamai publishes a "State of the Internet" report. This report includes data gathered from across the Akamai Intelligent Platform about attack traffic, broadband adoption, mobile connectivity, and other relevant topics concerning the Internet and its usage, as well as trends seen in this data over time. To learn more, and to access the archive of past reports, please visit www.akamaLcornIstateoftheintemet.