The global average connection speed over the Akamai platform reached 2.9 Mbps in the fourth quarter of 2012, 5 percent more than in the third quarter, according to the enterprise cloud platform provider. The global average peak connection speed grew 4.6 percent to 16.6 Mbps over the same period. South Korea had the highest average connection speed at 14 Mbps in the fourth quarter, down 4.8 percent on the third quarter, while Hong Kong continued to have the highest average peak connection speed, at 57.5 Mbps, up 6.2 percent.
Globally, adoption of broadband over 10 Mbps (high broadband) grew 2.7 percent in the fourth quarter, remaining at 11 percent. South Korea remained the country with the highest level of high broadband, at 49 percent (down 5.7%). Global adoption of broadband under 4 Mbps grew by 2.1 percent, but remained at 41 percent of the total. South Korea also led in this category, with a broadband adoption level of 86 percent, down 0.5 percent on the third quarter.
On mobile networks, average connection speeds ranged from 345 kbps to 8 Mbps, with average peak connection speeds from 2.7 Mbps to 44 Mbps. Mobile data traffic volume grew 28 percent sequentially in the fourth quarter and doubled on the year-earlier period, based on data collected by Ericsson.
Android Webkit accounted for 35.3 percent of requests to the Akamai Intelligent Platform, closely followed by Apple Mobile Safari with 32.6 percent. For users of mobile devices across all networks, not only cellular, Apple Mobile Safari accounted for an average of 58.7 percent, compared to 21.7 percent for Android Webkit.
Akamai customers reported 768 DDoS attacks in 2012, up more than 200 percent from 2011. Of those, 35 percent targeted companies in the commerce sector and 22 percent focused on media and entertainment companies. Enterprise companies, which include financial services, were subject to 20 percent of reported attacks, 14 percent targeted high tech and nine percent of reported attacks were directed toward public sector agencies. The 768 attacks were reported by 413 unique organisations.
