Italy pushed Canada out of the top ten countries by IP connections during 1Q11, as the global number of unique IP addresses grew 20% year-on-year, statistics from cloud optimization firm Akamai show.
The top ten countries accounted for 70% of all connections during the quarter, as the number of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai’s internet platform hit 587 million. The firm states its platform carries up to 30% of the world’s web traffic, giving it a unique insight into the global market.
Figures for mobile data consumption highlight a minority rule, with subscribers at 7% of the operators surveyed using an average of 1GB of data per month. Customers with 73% of carriers consumed an average of 100MB per month, and the remaining 20% less than 100MB. Average connection speeds across all operators range from 163kbps to 6MB.
The Norwegian city of Lyse offered the fastest average connection speeds in Europe, being ranked at number 33 in Akamai’s list of the top 100 cities. Cities in Asia Pacific dominated the list, with 61 Japanese cities and five from South Korea and Hong Kong. US cities came next, with 18 entries in the top 100.
However, growing penetration and access speeds bring with them higher risk of cyber attack. Akamai’s figures show Myanmar was the main perpetrator of attacks – being the source of 13% of attack traffic -, with the US in second place on 10%. Italy topped the list in terms of attacks originating on mobile networks, accounting for 25% of attack traffic in 1Q11.