In the first quarter of 2011, over 584 million unique IP addresses from 237 countries/regions were connected to the Akamai platform, up 5.2 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2010, according to the "State of the Internet"  report conducted by Akamai Technologies. In Romania, the values ​​of average speed connection in the fourth quarter of 2010 was 6.9 Mbps, while in the first quarter of 2011, the speed decreased to 6.6 Mbps.

Akamai's quarterly report on the situation of the Internet is based on data collected from the Akamai global distribution platform, which incorporates about 30 percent of the global Web traffic in one day, with servers in 650 cities from 72 countries.

According to the latest quarterly report, countries/regions in top 10 countries represent 70 percent of IP addresses. This indicates that most unique IP addresses in the world are concentrated in a few geographic regions. In this report Italy is positioned in the top ten countries with an increase of 11 percent per quarter.

In the first quarter of 2011, the estimated average speed connection for known telecom operators ranged from a maximum speed of just over 6Mbps at a minimum of 163 kbps, according to the report.

The number of unique IPv4 addresses has increased from 323 million in the first quarter of 2008 to 584 million in the first quarter of 2011, up 80 percent in 3 years.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Sxc.hu)