Report: Asia dominates in Net speed, attacks

Asia is home not only to some of the world's fastest Internet connections, but also the highest attack traffic, new statistics have shown.

The Asia-Pacific and Oceania region generated 47 percent of all malicious traffic, according to Akamai's State of the Internet report for the second quarter of 2011 released Tuesday. In contrast, Europe accounted for 30 percent of attack traffic, while the Americas and Africa contributed 20 percent, and 3 percent, respectively.

The Internet content delivery specialist based its study over 604 million unique IP (Internet Protocol) addresses from 238 countries and regions connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform.

Five of the top 10 economies for Web attack traffic between April and June this year were from the region--Taiwan topped the global charts, with one in 10 attacks originating from the North Asian market. Myanmar, which was No. 1 during Q1, 2011, was second with 9.1 percent.

China, Indonesia and India occupied the fourth, sixth and eighth positions respectively.
Source: Akamai (Click image to enlarge.)

On the security front, Akamai also observed a move toward stronger encryption. It reported that the use of the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) 128-SHA-1 cipher has tripled since the beginning of 2009, while the RC4-MD5-128 had declined by almost two-thirds. Both offer 128-bit encryption.

The company added that the use of RC4-based ciphers may drop further to near-zero levels within the next several years, and the shift toward stronger ciphers suggest that SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) will become more secure over time.

Region of high-speed connectivity
In terms of Web connection rates, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan continue to lead the world, the report indicated. During the second quarter, South Korea recorded an average connection speed of 13.8Mbps (megabits per second), a 17-percent year-on-year decline and a drop of 4 percent over the first quarter of 2011.

Hong Kong clocked a speed bump of 21 percent over Q2, 2010 with an average speed of 10.3 Mbps between April and June this year, while Japan registered 8.9 Mbps, an increase of 11 percent over the same period last year. Five other economies--Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia and Thailand--made it to the top 50 for connection speed.

Globally, the average connection speed was 2.6 Mbps, a jump of 46 percent over 2010.

Narrowing the selection down to cities, Asia again dominated with 71 of the top 100 cities with fastest Net connection. The first spot was a tie between two South Korean cities--Taegu and Taejon, which both boasted 15.8 Mbps on average. Other than 69 South Korean and Japanese cities, Hong Kong and Australia's Canberra also made the list.