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The State of the Internet, by the Numbers

10 highlights from Akamai’s Internet report.

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Amy has worked on StateTech since May 2007. As managing editor, she shapes editorial content for print and online. Before that, she spent 10 years at Network World as senior managing editor of features and managing editor of features. Amy began her IT publishing career at PC Week. While out of the office, she enjoys traveling and rooting for the Red Sox.

Distributed denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks increased in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to Akamai’s State of the Internet, Q4 2013 Report. The company’s customers were targeted by 346 DDoS attacks, a 23 percent increase over the previous quarter. The public sector was hit with 81 reported DDoS attacks last year.

Akamai’s Intelligent Platform gathers volumes of data on metrics, such as connection speed, attack traffic and mobile connectivity, to shed light on online trends. The report shows that the field of available IPv4-address space continues to shrink — just under 783 million unique IPv4 addresses connected to the company’s platform in the fourth quarter of 2013, up about 22 million from the previous quarter.

Here are some of the interesting findings:

43% Percentage of observed attack traffic originating from China

19% Percentage of attack traffic originating from United States

37 Number of reported DDoS attacks in the public sector in Q4

30% Volume of attacks targeting Port 445

2.9% Percentage increase in unique IPv4 addresses connecting to the Akamai Intelligent Platform

23.2 Mbps Global average peak connection speed

43.7 Mbps U.S. average peak connection speed

63.8 Mbps Average peak connection speed in Massachusetts

0.6 Mbps–8.9 Mbps Range of average connection speeds on mobile networks

70% Increase in volume of mobile data traffic from Q4 2012 to Q4 2013

Take a look at the highlights in the infographic below, and download the complete report here.