Akamai Technologies released its “First Quarter, 2017 State of the Internet Report” offering global statistics including connection speeds, broadband adoption metrics, notable disruptions, and IPv4 exhaustion/IPv6 implementation based on data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform. According to the report, global average connection speed was 7.2 Mbps, which is an increase of 15 percent year over year (YoY). In terms of global average peak connection speed, the data shows that rose 28 percent YoY to 44.6 Mbps in the first quarter.

“Increases in connection speeds and broadband penetration have helped enable the internet to support levels of traffic that even just a few years ago would have been unimaginable,” David Belson, editor of the report, observes. “One need only look to January’s U.S. Presidential Inauguration, which broke traffic records for live coverage of a single news event delivered by Akamai, largely thanks to the combination of more viewers watching at increasingly higher levels of video quality.” 

Akamai also reports that South Korea again had the highest average connection speed globally at 28.6 Mbps in the first quarter. Singapore had the highest peak connection speed at 184.5 Mbps in the first quarter. Global 4, 10, 15, and 25 Mbps broadband adoption rates increased 13 percent, 29 percent, 33 percent, and 42 percent YoY, respectively.

On the IPv4 and IPv6 front in Q1 2017, more than 814 million unique IPv4 addresses reportedly connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform, which is a 0.7 percent increase as compared to the first quarter of 2016. Belgium stayed on top as the global leader in IPv6 adoption with 38 percent of its connections to Akamai occurring over IPv6. However, that’s down 19 percent from the previous quarter.

Details on downloading the report are here.