Head east for faster broadband

As expected, Far Eastern countries have topped a global league table of broadband speeds. But perhaps more surprisingly, some Eastern European countries also performed better than their Western counterparts.

The figures come from Akamai, a company which provides networks and associated services in 198 countries. It believes its data is detailed enough that it can be fairly extrapolated to cover the entire Internet.

South Korea remains the country with the fastest average speed of 12 Mbps, followed by Hong Kong and Japan. The next two spots go to Romania and Latvia, which have both seen major speed increases in the past year: more than a third in the latter case.

The U.S. is in 16th place with an average speed of 4.7 Mbps. While there’s an argument that this is a poor position for such a major country (and cited as a reason for federal investment in expanding and improving provision), it’s likely also the result of the U.S. having so many rural and remote areas compared to the likes of South Korea.

That’s partly borne out by the U.S. having a dozen of the 100 global cities with the fastest average speed, the American contingent being headed up by California’s Monterey Park with an average 7.2Mbps. On a state-by-state basis, Delaware remains in top spot with the District of Columbia, Massachusetts and New Hampshire vying for second place. Utah is the surprise entry in seventh place, the only state in the top ten that’s neither densely populated nor in the Northeast.

The U.S. also did better on a chart of the maximum speeds achieved by users, placing eighth with an average high across the country 15 Mbps. Again, Monterey Park is the place to head, with the average user peaking at 25 Mbps.

The total number of IP addresses tracked by Akamai rose by 7.2% in three months. That rapid pace is one of the reasons the number of addresses which can be allocated by the current IPv4 system is set to run out within a year.

The report also looked at where “attack traffic” came from. Russia was the most common source, with the United States in second place and China closely behind. It’s worth remembering these countries aren’t necessarily where the people behind the attacks are based: given the population of the three countries, it’s likely they simply house more computers which have been hijacked for botnets.

And just in case you ever wondered which computer port is the main route in and out of computers, its port 445. Not coincidentally, that happens to be the main port for carrying data through Windows’ built-in filesharing.

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