The content delivery network tapped its resources to produce the first of what will be an ongoing look at the Internet on a quarterly basis.
In its position as a premier content delivery service, Akamai holds a perspective on Internet traffic, both good and malicious, that few others can match. The firm plans to share some of its observations through a new report.
An initial summary from Akamai for the first three months revealed how malicious attacks originated in 125 countries around the world. China and the United States represented the top two countries where attacks began.
The two nations accounted for roughly 30 percent of the origination of attacks during those three months. Many attacks focused on 23 unique ports, with attempts to deliver a host of malware through them.
Microsoft’s Remote Procedure Call port 135 saw the most attacks hitting it, with nearly 30 percent of attacks trying to break into systems that way. Another 13 percent tried to tag NetBIOS through port 139.
Akamai also looked at connection speeds for Internet users around the globe. South Korea topped the list of countries with 5Mbps or greater connections, with 64 percent having those. The United States, with its concentration of broadband in the hands of a few multi-billion dollar telcos, comes in at a miserable seventh place with 20 percent, behind Belgium’s 21 percent, embarrassingly enough.
Even Romania has more high-speed connections as a percentage of population than the country that invented the Internet in the first place. At least the US managed to stay ahead of Nepal, albeit not by very much.
