Global IPv4 address exhaustion is imminent

According to Akamai's Second Quarter 2012 State of the Internet Report, an imminent global depletion of IPv4 addresses is evident. Akamai identifies a 460-fold increase in IPv6 requests on its platform from June 2011 to June 2012.

Akamai Technologies has released its latest State of the Internet report for the second quarter of 2012. Based on information collected in the Akamai Intelligent Platform, this report provides insight into key global Internet statistics such as Internet penetration, mobile connection speed and data consumption, the origin of attacks on Internet traffic, and global and regional connection speed.

The Second Quarter 2012 State of the Internet report also provides analysis of mobile browser usage by network connection type collected through Akamai IO. Additionally, this report provides a study of two recent Internet outages that occurred in China and Syria measured using relevant traffic patterns on the Akamai Intelligent Platform.

Global Internet Penetration

En el segundo trimestre de 2012, más de 665 millones de direcciones IPv4 desde 242 países y regiones se conectaron a la Plataforma Inteligente de Akamai. Esto representa un incremento del 10 por ciento anual. Como una dirección IP única puede representar múltiples individuos en algunos casos, Akamai estima que el número total de usuarios Web únicos que se conectaron a su plataforma durante este trimestre ha superado los mil millones.

Entre los países de la lista de los 10 primeros en cuanto a direcciones IPv4 que se conectaron a la Plataforma Inteligente de Akamai durante el trimestre, Italia mostró un impresionante crecimiento anual del 25 por ciento, seguida del Reino Unido con un 17 por ciento.

However, industry data indicates that IPv4 addresses are being depleted rapidly. RIPE, the European Internet registry, recently announced that it had reached its final block (~16 million) of IPv4 addresses, and ARIN, the regional Internet registry for the Americas, announced that it only had three blocks left.

With an IPv6 footprint in more than 50 countries, Akamai has helped companies participating in the Internet Society's June 6 “IPv6 Global Launch” make their content available in IPv6. IPV6 traffic on the Akamai Intelligent Platform grew significantly in the second quarter as customers of all sizes enabled their websites for IPv6 prior to launch.

Attacks

Akamai maintains a distributed set of agents deployed across the Internet that monitor Internet attack traffic. Based on data collected by these agents, Akamai can identify the first countries from which attacks originate as well as the main ports targeted by these attacks.

China remains the leading source of Internet attack traffic, responsible for 16 percent. The United States remained in second place with 12 percent and Türkiye took third place with a slight increase in the second quarter, reaching 7.6 percent.

In the second quarter, Europe was responsible for just over 36 percent of all observed Internet attack traffic. The decline in the concentration of Internet attack traffic caused Germany to leave the list of the top 10 countries in terms of origin of attacks, replaced by Italy (ranked 9) which was responsible for 2.1% of the observed traffic.

Akamai noted that the concentration of attack traffic among the top 10 targeted ports had dropped to 62 percent in the second quarter compared to 77 percent in the first quarter. The decline can be largely attributed to a decrease in attacks on Port 445 after an unusually high increase in the first quarter.

Connection speed

The global average connection speed increased by 13 percent, reaching 3.0 Mbps from the first to the second quarter of 2012, thus continuing the trend of strong growth.

In the second quarter of 2012, a total of six European countries made it into the global top 10 list. Latvia (No. 4) topped the pack with an average connection speed of 8.7 Mbps, followed by Switzerland (No. 5), the Netherlands (No. 6), the Czech Republic (No. 7), Denmark (No. 8) and Finland (No. 10).

Having been the country with the highest average connection speed for the last two quarters, the Netherlands is ranked number two after Switzerland which now leads Europe with an average connection speed of 8.4 Mbps.

Among the European countries that achieved quarterly growth in the second quarter of 2012, Austria had the largest increase (11 percent), reaching 6.3 Mbps. Spain had the smallest increase, with just 0.5 percent, reaching 4.6 Mbps.

Global peak average connection speed grew 44 percent annually, with increases of 10 percent or more in the top 10 countries. Switzerland (No. 6) in the top 10 list saw an impressive 25 percent growth, followed by Bulgaria (No. 10) with 17 percent growth, while Romania (No. 4) and Hungary (No. 9) both achieved 15 percent annual growth.

A number of European countries experienced annual growth of 20 percent or more in their average peak connection speed. These include Poland (up 38 percent), the United Kingdom (up 28 percent), Spain (up 28 percent), Austria (up 21 percent) and Germany (up 20 percent).

Mobile

In the first second of 2012, the fastest average mobile connection speed was 7.5 Mbps, delivered by a mobile provider in Russia, while a mobile provider in the United Kingdom had the highest average peak mobile connection speed at 44.4 Mbps.

Akamai IO mobile browser data for the month of June shows that approximately 38 percent of requests on mobile networks globally came from Android Webkit. About 33 percent came from Mobile Safari; 23 percent of Opera Mini; and around 4 percent for Blackberry. The pattern changes when all networks (not just mobile) are included, so Mobile Safari accounted for an average of about 60 percent of requests. Android Webkit accounted for about 23 percent. The other mobile browsers obtained a much lower percentage. The data suggests that Android devices are used most frequently on mobile networks, while iOS devices account for the bulk of WiFi usage.

Situation in Spain

The adoption of high-speed broadband in Spain grew by 132% annually and that of broadband by 28%, while the average connection speed in Spain remains 4.6 Mbps. Only 4.5 percent of connections were made at a speed greater than 10 Mbps, compared to 43 percent of connections that were made at a speed greater than 4 Mbps.