Hong Kong takes Internet speed title

[beijingwalker]

Hong Kong takes Internet speed title
By Hilary Whiteman, CNN
January 25, 2013 -- Updated 0650 GMT

Hong Kong (CNN) -- It's likely someone from Hong Kong has just beaten you to this story.

The city was found to have the highest peak connection speed of just over 54 megabytes per second during the second half of 2012, according to quarterly analysis by Akamai Technologies.

It's the first time speeds have shot past 50 Mbps and if the global trend continues, it's just going to get faster. While there was a slight drop in pace over the quarter, over the year average peak speeds surged 36%.
Top peak connection speeds (Mbps)

1. Hong Kong (54.1)
2. South Korea (48.8)
3. Japan (42.2)
4. Latvia (37.5)
5. Romania (37.4)

In the peak speed stakes, Hong Kong is followed by South Korea (48.8 Mbps), Japan (42.2 Mbps), Latvia (37.5 Mbps) and Romania (37.4 Mbps).

The United States straggled in in 14th with 29.6 Mbps. The U.S. state with the fastest connection is still Delaware with a swift 10.9 Mbps, although the District of Columbia is catching up.

For the fastest average connection speeds in Europe, head over to Switzerland (8.7 Mbps), which just beats the Netherlands (8.5 Mbps) to second, while the Czech Republic (7.7 Mbps) is in third.
Top average connection speeds (Mbps)

1. South Korea (14.7)
2. Japan (10.5)
3. Hong Kong (9.0)
4. Switzerland (8.7)
5. Latvia (8.7)

The place NOT to be for speedy downloads is China. Despite a 21% jump in connection speed during the quarter, the country's average peak connection reached just 7.1 Mbps. That makes it the slowest in Asia and gives it a lowly global rank of 123.

For consistency, South Korea was the best place to log on, boasting the highest average connection speed of 14.2 Mbps. Japan came second at 10.7 Mbps and Hong Kong third with a surprisingly sluggish 8.9 Mbps.

The State of the Internet Report also revealed the top sources of Internet attacks, as well as the most common targets.
Top attack traffic (originating countries)

1. China (33%)
2. United States (13%)
3. Russia (4.7%)
4. Taiwan (4.5%)
5. Turkey (4.3%)

Once again, China was found to be the single largest source of attack traffic -- 33% -- during the quarter. Attacks from the country doubled during the period, a statistic the report described as "somewhat surprising."

The United States and Russia came next in the top three. In all, the top 10 countries were responsible for almost three quarters of global attacks.

Akamai releases its report every quarter, based on information gathered from 680 million unique IP addresses connected to its cloud platform.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Well, my own internet connection is extremely fast, but I never knew we were the top in the world.

 

[Don Jaguar]

Well, my own internet connection is extremely fast, but I never knew we were the top in the world.

What is the downloading speed?

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

What is the downloading speed?

I benchmarked my internet a while ago and was about the same as the number shown in the article (54 Mbps). I can't remember the exact number, but it was definitely much faster than I needed.

However, it doesn't mean much.... since no server in the world sends data to me that fast.

Therefore it is limited by how fast the other side can send it to me. But I don't complain, I can get multiple gigabyte movie files in a few minutes easy, even if it only downloads at a tiny fraction of the top possible speed.

 

[Audio]

However, it doesn't mean much.... since no server in the world sends data to me that fast.

It is possible. ********. Need to have good seed/leach ratio though.