Broadband Speeds Increase Around the World

[Menace II Society]

But Not in the U.S.

Looking at data from the third quarter of 2009, content delivery network Akamai just announced that the average broadband speed in the U.S. declined by 2.4% in the third quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter in 2008. In the U.S., Delaware currently leads with 7.2 Mbps, though it remains far behind South Korea, where the average speed is almost 15 Mpbs. Currently, the U.S. is in 18th place, far behind Japan, Hong Kong, Romania and Sweden. The average U.S. broadband speed is currently 3.9 Mbps.

If you are looking for a fast Internet connection in the U.S., Sandy, UT and Iowa City currently offer the fastest connections. Delaware (7.2 Mbps), New Hampshire (5.9 Mbps) and Massachusetts (5.9 Mbps) are the top 3 states on Akamai's list. The states with the fastest average broadband speeds can all be found on the East Coast.

It is interesting to speculate why average speed in the U.S. declined over the last year. Chances are that a lot of people downsized their connections during the economic downturn. If you have a theory, let us know in the comments.



IP Addresses: U.S. Leads but China is Catching Up

Akamai's quarterly report also notes that the number of unique IP addresses increased by about 4.5% globally since the second quarter of 2009. The U.S. is still home to the largest number of unique IP addresses, but China is catching up quickly. In total, the U.S. was home to just over 119 million unique IP addresses in Q3 2009. With 49 million IP addresses, China is currently a distant second, but the number of Chinese IP addresses increased by 30% compared to Q2 2009, while U.S. addresses on increased by 9%.



Attack Traffic

Akamai also looked at where most of the traffic from botnets and other attack traffic originated from. Russia (13%) is currently the source of most of this traffic, followed by Brazil (8.6%) and the U.S. (6.9%). On a positive note, it's important to note that attack traffic from the U.S. declined from 15% compared to Q2 2009. Attack traffic from China declined even more. In Q2 2009, 31% of all of this traffic originated in China. Now, China is only responsible for about 6.5% of all attack traffic.

Most of these attacks (78%) target port 445. On Windows systems, port 445 handles local printer and file sharing traffic.



More..

[Brother Blue Collar]

lmao@china and all those places having faster connections yet their government chooses what they're allowed to see.

waste of an increase if you ask me.

but yea it's sad.

[doesnotexist]

lmao@china and all those places having faster connections yet their government chooses what they're allowed to see.

waste of an increase if you ask me.

but yea it's sad.

im pretty sure of all thiose places china is the only one with serious restrictions. the rest are all the same as here.

[Baxter D. Wall]

This is what happens when you have monopolistic companies working in semi-collusion with the FCC in their back pockets. Comcast is the worst offender by far, with Sandvine and other less publicized filtering methods, but AT&T and Verizon are terrible, too. They filter your internet and cap the speeds to give you significantly less than what you pay for because it's cheaper for them to hook up 15,000 people to the same node than to upgrade to fiber and bulk their infrastructure.

[Menace II Society]

Of course the U.S. would be behind..

The rest of the world is ahead of us and we're trailing behind.

[Opie M.]

This is what happens when you have monopolistic companies working in semi-collusion with the FCC in their back pockets. Comcast is the worst offender by far, with Sandvine and other less publicized filtering methods, but AT&T and Verizon are terrible, too. They filter your internet and cap the speeds to give you significantly less than what you pay for because it's cheaper for them to hook up 15,000 people to the same node than to upgrade to fiber and bulk their infrastructure.

Verizon is actually on fiber now in most places. And their dsl bandwidth isn't affected by traffic in your neighborhood. Whether they're filtering traffic is another story. I do know that I'm a heavy torrent downloader and I watch all my tv on hulu and netflix streams at HD quality. I've never had issues with either verizon dsl or fios. Even when online gaming. Cable is a different story. I usually benchmark at around 24mb/s on cable but between like 5pm-8pm you can't even stream hulu at full quality a lot of the time.

[Vitalsyn]

lmao@china and all those places having faster connections yet their government chooses what they're allowed to see.

waste of an increase if you ask me.

but yea it's sad.

so true, lol

[Menace II Society]

Verizon is actually on fiber now in most places. And their dsl bandwidth isn't affected by traffic in your neighborhood. Whether they're filtering traffic is another story. I do know that I'm a heavy torrent downloader and I watch all my tv on hulu and netflix streams at HD quality. I've never had issues with either verizon dsl or fios. Even when online gaming. Cable is a different story. I usually benchmark at around 24mb/s on cable but between like 5pm-8pm you can't even stream hulu at full quality a lot of the time.

Cablevision/Optimum came out with a faster braodband speed awhile back. You get about 101 Mbps. You have to pay a shit load extra for it though..

Like $100 extra ontop of what you pay for regular broadband monthly, and you have to pay a one time professional installation fee of $34.95 and $300 activation fee.

[RXL]

lol@but the U.S