The speed at which people around the world connect to the Internet is climbing at a 14% annual clip and now averages nearly 2 megabits per second, according Akamai's "State of the Internet" report that is due out Monday.
There remain huge variations around that average speed. South Koreans hook into the Internet at 14 megabits a second, seven times the global average, earning them the top spot on Akamai's list, the Fortune magazine reported in its Internet edition.
The global Internet continues to grow bigger and faster at an impressive pace, the report's data show. The number of devices hooked to the Internet climbed 20% in the last year (ended September 30), but it's the increases in speed that are the most eye-catching.
Hong Kong came second with 9.2mps, followed by Japan with 9.2mps, Romania with 7.0mps and the Netherlands with 6.3mps. The United States came 12th with 5.0 mps.
The Akamai data give a unique window into the rapidly evolving Internet. As the world's biggest "content delivery network," the company's servers blast out billions of webpages, iTunes songs, and videos daily, sending them to users of every major wired network and wireless network on the planet. That makes it easy to record how many bits the world's different networks can deliver in a second.
In one surprise, Russia took the top spot in mobile download speeds, with one wireless operator there getting average connection speeds of 6 megabits per second. (Akamai doesn't disclose which company it was.) Still, sky-high wireless speeds often say as much about the crowding of the network as they do about the quality of the technology. After all, you can go faster on a traffic-free county highway than you can on the Autobahn at rush hour.
In some places like South Korea, average speeds have declined because more people are accessing the web from mobile devices. (Wireless download speeds are climbing, but will always lag fiber-optic connections.)
한국 인터넷 접속 속도 세계최고
한국이 전 세계 국가 가운데 인터넷 접속속도가 가장 빠른 것으로 나타났다고 웹 트래픽 전문업체 아카마이(Akamai)의 조사결과를 인용해 미 경제전문지 포춘 인터넷판이 23일 보도했다.
이에 따르면 세계 인터넷 속도는 지난해 9월 말 현재 평균 초당 1.9메가비트(mps)를 기록한 것으로 나타났다. 이는 전년도에 비해 14% 속도가 증가한 것이다.
국가별로는 한국이 초당 14mps로 1위를 기록, 세계 평균보다 7배나 빠른 것으로 나타났다.
이어 홍콩(9.2mps), 일본(8.5mps), 루마니아(7.0mps), 네덜란드(6.3mps) 등 순이었다. 미국(5.0mps)은 12위를 기록했다.
포춘은 한국의 경우 전년도보다 인터넷 속도가 상위 10위권 국가 가운데 유일하게 감소한 것으로 조사됐다고 전하고 이는 모바일기기를 통해 웹사이트에 접속하는 사람들이 크게 늘었기 때문이라고 전했다.
포춘은 이번 조사결과, 매우 빠르게 세계의 인터넷이 지속적으로 확대되고, 속도도 빨라지고 있다고 전하고 지난해 인터넷에 접속하는 기기들도 20%나 증가했다고 말했다.
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