Average Internet speeds around the world rose by 20 percent year over the year in Q4, 2014, with the new average being 4.5 Mbps, according to Akamai's "state of the Internet" report.
The report also highlighted a growing interest in mobile traffic, with global traffic jumping by a whopping 54 percent.
"Over the course of 2014, we've seen healthy global growth across all of our key metrics for Internet connectivity, broadband adoption and 4K readiness," said report editor David Belson. "The positive trends make an interesting contrast to a recent study that found 4.4 billion people around the world do not go online, indicating a strong need for continued efforts to improve and deploy Internet infrastructure globally."
The report also highlighted the growing concern for distributed denial of service, or DDoS attacks, with over 10 percent of attacks originating from China and the U.S. respectively. The other eight of the top 10 countries where DDoS attacks originated from accounted for less than 5 percent of attacks each.
While China did account for a large portion of DDoS attacks, it seems as though the number is falling. In Q3 of 2014, attack traffic from China accounted for 49 percent of all attack traffic, while in Q4 China accounted for 41 percent. The attack traffic coming from the U.S. also decreased from 17 percent to 13 percent.
As far as Internet speeds go, South Korea remained at the top, with the average Internet speed being a massive 22.2 Mbps. Hong Kong sat in second place with 16.8 Mbps, followed by Japan, with 15.2 Mbps. The U.S. came in at 22nd on the list, with an average Internet speed of 11.1 Mbps.
Global adoption of broadband Internet, which Akamai currently defines as a 4 Mbps download speed, fell slightly by 0.7 percent from Q3 2014, however year over year adoption was up by 20 percent.
Akamai, however, is considering reevaluating what it considers to be broadband to fall in line with the FCCs new definition. The FCC defines broadband as 25 Mbps download speed, up from the 4 Mbps that defined broadband starting in 2010. In 2010, Akamai changed its definition of broadband to fall in line with the FCCs definition, but Akamai has yet to make the same move this time around.
"Although the United States is just one country of many around the world working to improve Internet connectivity, in light of this update we will be reviewing how we define the metrics included in the report, as well how we present the data in future issues," continued Belson.
Essentially, results for Q1 2015 will likely be defined differently, although they will discuss the same data.
