Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ
Based on data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent PlatformT, the report provides insight into key global statistics such as network connectivity and connection speeds, attack traffic, and broadband adoption and availability, among many others.
The First Quarter, 2013 State of the Internet Report includes new observations on "account checker" attacks targeting e-commerce sites and the impact on Akamai traffic from events including the death of Hugo Chavez, announcement of the new Pope, and undersea cable disruptions. The report also reviews mobile browser usage by network type based on data from Akamai IO.
More than 733 million unique IPv4 addresses from 243 countries/regions connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform, an increase of 3.1 percent over the previous quarter and 10 percent year over year. Akamai estimates the total number of unique Web users connecting to its platform during the quarter to be well over one billion.
Among the top 10 countries that connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform in the first quarter, quarterly growth ranged from 0.7 percent in Germany to 5.3 percent in China. Across the full set of observed countries/regions worldwide, nearly 75 percent saw a quarterly increase in unique IP address counts.
Also Read
Akamai maintains a distributed set of unadvertised agents deployed across the Internet that log connection attempts, which the company classifies as attack traffic. Based on the 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.
It is important to note, however, that the originating country as identified by the source IP address may not represent the nation in which an attacker resides. For example, an individual in the United States may be launching attacks from compromised systems anywhere in the world.
Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 177 unique countries/regions during the first quarter of 2013. While China kept its position as the single-largest volume source of observed traffic with 34 percent of the total, Indonesia with 21 percent of observed traffic. The United States dropped from second to third with 8.3 percent of observed traffic.
The top 10 countries/regions generated more than 80 percent of the observed attack traffic during the quarter. More than half of the total observed attack traffic originated from China and Indonesia.
In the first quarter of 2013, Akamai customers reported 208 attacks, up slightly from the 200 reported in the previous quarter. Of those attacks, 35 percent targeted Enterprise customers; 32 percent were focused on Commerce customers; 22 percent on Media customers; 7 percent on High Tech customers; and 4 percent targeted Public Sector customers.
"This quarter's State of the Internet Report shows continued positive growth in terms of Internet and broadband adoption worldwide. We have seen overall increases in average and peak connection speeds along with greater broadband penetration on both a quarterly and annual basis," said David Belson, the report's editor.
"However, the levels of malicious activity we've observed show no signs of abating, as evidenced by the ongoing rise in DDoS attacks. This reinforces the continued need for vigilance by organizations that are conducting business and maintaining a presence on the Internet.
