Akamai’s ‘State of the Internet’ Report Enters Fourth Year of Analyzing Global Connectivity, Attack Traffic and Broadband Consumption, and Ireland has made it to 10th position.
Who and what is Akamai well the folks in Akamai transparently mirror content—sometimes all site content including HTML, CSS, and software downloads, and sometimes just media objects such as audio, graphics, animation, and video—from customer servers. Though the domain name (but not subdomain) is the same, the IP address points to an Akamai server rather than the customer’s server. The Akamai server is automatically picked depending on the type of content and the user’s network location. Why would you do this The benefit is that users can receive content from whichever Akamai server is close to them or has a good connection, leading to faster download times and less vulnerability to network congestion or outages.
So why do people look at this report, well it gives a insight into who and what is connecting to the Internet globally.
Highlights include from there press release
Internet Penetration
In the first quarter of 2011, more than 584 million unique IP addresses from 237 countries/regions connected to the Akamai Internet platform. This represents 5.2 percent more IP addresses than connected in the fourth quarter of 2010, and an increase of 20 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago.
Mobile Consumption & Connectivity
In the first quarter of 2011, the average measured connection speed for known mobile providers worldwide ranged from a high of slightly more than 6 Mbps to a low of 163 kbps.