Average U.S. Internet speed up 28%, but Korea and Japan still leading

Akamai published its regular "State of the Internet" report for the last quarter of 2012 yesterday. The report looks at global Internet speeds, as well as the state of Internet security, the number if IPv4 numbers in use and other similar metrics.

Average internet speeds in the US rose by more than a quarter in the past 12 months, though with an average rate of 7.4 Mbps America still sits in eighth place of the world's fastest. South Korea still holds the top spot. Its average rates are almost double those of the US, though the country actually saw a decline year-on-yearThe second place is for Japan – with a year-on-year improvement of 19-percent. Hong Kong takes third position.

As for Internet security, the report says that cyberwarfare incidences jumped sharply in 2012, with the number of distributed denial of service attacks more than tripling from the previous year.

"In many ways, DDoS has become the weapon of choice for multiple types of attackers, from political activists to criminals, and potentially even nation-states," Akamai said.

China remained the largest culprit of cyberattacks, according to the report. In the fourth quarter alone, 41 percent of observed attack traffic originated in that country, up from 33 percent in the third quarter. The share of attacks from the U.S. slid slightly to 10 percent in the fourth quarter from 13 percent in the third quarter.

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