Average Internet Connection Speeds Decreased Slightly in Q3 of 2014, Says Akamai Report

Average global Internet connection speeds decreased in Q3 of 2014, while “attack traffic” increased, said the Akamai Technologies 2014 State of the Internet Report released Thursday. The report’s data was collected by Akamai’s Intelligent Platform and included responses from the company’s customers. Although global Internet connection speeds stayed above the 4 Mbps “‘broadband’ threshold,” those speeds dropped by 2.8 percent to 4.5 Mbps in Q3, said Akamai. The global broadband adoption rate of more than 4 Mbps reached 60 percent in Q3, a 1 percent increase quarter-over-quarter. Adoption rates of more than 10 Mbps decreased by 0.5 percent in Q3. The report located attack traffic from 201 unique countries or regions in Q3, up from 161 in Q2. Fifty-percent of the attacks came from China. The number of Chinese attacks were three times greater than those that came from the U.S., although China and the U.S. were the only countries that accounted for more than 10 percent of global attack traffic. Akamai customers reported 270 distributed denial of service attacks in Q3, a 4 percent decrease from Q3 in 2013. More than 790 million IPv4 addresses connected to the company’s Intelligent Platform from more than 246 countries or regions in Q3. South Korea had the fastest average mobile connection speed, growing from 15.2 Mbps in Q2 to 18.2 Mbps in Q3. Iran’s 0.9 Mbps was the lowest average mobile connection speed in Q3.