Internet Connection Speeds - Up and to the Right, for Some | News Update 2013
Internet
engineers have a simple shorthand way to describe graphs relating to
aspects of the Internet's evolution - they go up and to the right.
Growth, often exponential growth, is a feature of so much of the
technological change that makes up the Internet, and that is driven by
the Internet, that we can be fooled into taking it for granted.
In that light, Akamai's latest State of the Internet
report makes interesting reading. Leaving aside the reported 65Gbps
distributed denial-of-service attacks for another day, global average
connection speeds and global average peak connection speeds as measured
by Akamai both declined in the quarter. These declines are not major
(6.8% in the former case, 1.4% in the latter) but are surprising
nonetheless. In each case, these declines were only seen in one out of
the ten countries making up the top ten.
Whether this marks a turning point or a shift in the
dynamics of Internet bandwidth growth and consumption, or is simply a
blip possibly reflecting the state of the global economy at a specific
point in time, will only become clear as further reports
become available later this year.
If we look at the figures for global average connections
speeds and global average peak connection speeds over the past several
years, we see that such reverses are not unprecedented. And another,
perhaps more interesting, trend also becomes apparent. The gap between
the global average and the peak has grown from 4Mbps to 13Mbps in 3
years. This growing divide reminds us that there remain a great
diversity of Internet connections and experiences of available Internet
bandwidth when viewed globally. Assuming that any specific national or
regional perspective is representative of the global Internet is likely
to lead to wrong conclusions.
Figure: Comparison of global average connection speeds as reported by Akamai since 2008 in their State of the Internet reports.
This growing divide is not surprising given the
observed overall trend toward greater availability of higher speed
connections, something that is also reflected in the latest output from
the FCC's Measuring Broadband America program
where the FCC finds that panelists in September 2012 were, on average,
subscribing to higher speed tiers than were panelists in April 2012. The
FCC are also now reporting on higher speed connections up to 75Mbps as
these are increasingly available in the US and they have plans to report
on still higher speed tiers in the future.
While some technologists today see a demand for and work
towards Internet access speeds in excess of 1Gbps, the data suggest we
must ensure we strive to develop and engineer Internet applications and
services to cater for an ever increasing diversity of bandwidth
provision and uptake.
Good Luck Everyone :)
Internet Connection Speeds - Up and to the Right, for Some | News Update 2013
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