The Net (According To Akamai)

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The Net (According To Akamai)

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @04:07AM from the do-you-see-what-i-see dept.

The Installer quotes a gizmag story saying "Akamai might not be a household name but between 15 to 30 percent of the world's Web traffic is carried on the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company's internet platform at any given time. Using data gathered by software constantly monitoring internet conditions via the company's nearly 100,000 servers deployed in 72 countries and spanning most of the networks within the internet, Akamai creates its quarterly State of the internet report. The report provides some interesting facts and figures, such as regions with the slowest and fastest connection speeds, broadband adoption rates and the origins of attack traffic."

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I hate slideshows by rbrausse · 2011-07-27 04:12 · Score: 3, Informative

all the pictures in the gizmag slideshow can be downloaded as one handy zip file.
1. Re:I hate slideshows by derGoldstein · 2011-07-27 04:59 · Score: 1
  
  More information and analysis on ars.
  
  --
  Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Myanmar is under influence from China... by madhatter256 · 2011-07-27 04:21 · Score: 2

The most likely reason Myanmar is number one is most likely due to China....
With the large influx of Chinese influence in Myanmar (http://www.asiapacificms.com/articles/myanmar_influence/) this past year and before, I'm not surprised they have become number one. Maybe China is out-sourcing their hackers over to there so as to draw attention away from China and simply grow their cyber-attack force.
I wouldn't be surprised if our government knows about this....

--
Previewing comments are for sissies!
1. Re:Myanmar is under influence from China... by tripleevenfall · 2011-07-27 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  These future events will affect you in the future!
Re:Instantaneous Telecommunication System by ColdWetDog · 2011-07-27 04:30 · Score: 1, Flamebait

After reading article 'The Universe as a Hologram', I've an idea to apply this theory into telecommunication system.
Briefly, in "holographic universe" theory, reality is stored in a high dimension space. Reality is a kind of superhologram which the past, present and future all exist simultaneously. Men can only receive/project a part of that reality. Maximum men can receive/project is only 4 dimensions (3 for space, 1 for time), and it's not the entire space and time. It's just a point in space and time ocean.
If we could store data in at least 5 dimension space! The sender stores the data there and the receiver projects to the same data/reality. This is what causes the instantaneous telecommunication system.
This can change future of 'the Net'. All traffic can be transmitted instantaneously. In 5 dimension space, the 'state' of the net is all possible states, so Akamai report no longer necessary haha.
Here, This might help you understand things better. You're pretty close.

--
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Reg Required by uncledrax · 2011-07-27 04:33 · Score: 3, Informative

The ACTUAL report (and archives), but behind a reg-wall: http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/

--
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
Re:Instantaneous Telecommunication System by DrData99 · 2011-07-27 04:35 · Score: 1

Wow. You might want to check your medication levels...
Speed vs. Usage by s31523 · 2011-07-27 04:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

I find it interesting that the U.S. is number 1 in usage (most unique IP's), but 14th in average connection speed. I would have thought the U.S. would have been a little bit better (speed-wise). China is #2 in both usage and speed. Interesting... Yet another area China will soon dominate the U.S. in (once they take the top spot in usage).
1. Re:Speed vs. Usage by bhcompy · 2011-07-27 04:45 · Score: 2
  
  China didn't start with a full copper network. US did. Early adoption isn't great for this.
2. Re:Speed vs. Usage by Brett+Buck · 2011-07-27 04:52 · Score: 1
  
  Why do I care about the speed? It's fast enough, faster isn't going to help me.
3. Re:Speed vs. Usage by hedwards · 2011-07-27 05:03 · Score: 1
  
  But it's not fast enough. It's hindering our use of the net for more cutting edge use. I'm lucky enough to have a 5mbps connection which is faster than much of the rest of the country, but I'm sitting here only a few miles from an IXP and Qwest is saying that they're not going to be upgrading the connection speeds of much of the city. I'm lucky in my neighborhood, I know of at least two other neighborhoods where the peak connection they offer is 1.5mbps.
  Comcast is more or less a non-option as they cheat on connection tests and cap downloads at 250gb per month, as well as having folks sharing their bandwidth with each other.
4. Re:Speed vs. Usage by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-07-27 05:16 · Score: 2
  
  It's a sad story. After successfully inventing the thing, and scoring some sweet IP blocks, we've been sticking our fingers in our ears and pretending that our telecommunications oligopoly-with-local-monopoly-characteristics is a vibrant free market, with predictably tepid results.
5. Re:Speed vs. Usage by demonbug · 2011-07-27 05:18 · Score: 1
  
  I find it interesting that the U.S. is number 1 in usage (most unique IP's), but 14th in average connection speed. I would have thought the U.S. would have been a little bit better (speed-wise). China is #2 in both usage and speed. Interesting... Yet another area China will soon dominate the U.S. in (once they take the top spot in usage).
  To me the most surprising thing was that U.S. average speed wasn't nearly as bad as my impression of it has been lately. Sure, South Korea has a significant advantage at ~14 mbps average, but other than that outlier the other nations ahead of the U.S. are in the 5.6-9 mbps range. Faster, but not really materially so - I don't think there is a lot you can do at 9 mbps that you can't do at 5.2 mbps. Yes, we still need to invest in faster speeds and expanding availability to more people, but at least from this metric we aren't as far behind as I thought.
  I was also surprised not to see Finland in the top 10 - it seems like every time there is a discussion of broadband access and speeds someone brings up Finland as a shining example of good broadband availability in a relatively sparsely populated nation; apparently, at least from Akamai's view of the 'net, availability (or at least uptake) isn't nearly as extensive as some have suggested.
6. Re:Speed vs. Usage by alen · 2011-07-27 05:21 · Score: 1
  
  blame flyover country
  the coasts and major cities are just as fast as asia. all the people who live next to cows with their sub 1mbps connections bring everyone else down. a lot of places are not served by cable or they don't want cable TV leaving them with DSL. even a lot of people in the cities have satellite TV and the cheapest DSL for internet at $10 a month
7. Re:Speed vs. Usage by arth1 · 2011-07-27 05:22 · Score: 1
  
  Like immersive interactive 3D content that lets me "experience", say, the Eiffel tower in HD - don't know what that means but that's my point, anyone dreaming up the next big thing with end the though with "but that would require insane bandwidth".
  3D web content of architecture and museums wasn't uncommon in the 90s. Look up "VRML".
8. Re:Speed vs. Usage by Anonymous Coward · 2011-07-27 05:25 · Score: 1
  
  As much as people whine and complain about ComCast I have yet to see any speed cheating. I get a consistent 15mb+ pretty much anywhere I go that supports that speed (BTW this is in Memphis, TN and upper MS. I also do my own tests to verify anything I see on SpeedTest). That is not cheating if the remote site can't keep up with your speed so I don't know where you are getting this cheating from. I get a consistent 50ms or less ping to most places in the ConUS and even if the pipe is shared in my neighborhood, I don't notice it. Yes, anecdotal evidence all, but making broad sweeping claims isn't exactly convincing either.
  As for the monthly cap...I have tried to hit that 3 months running. Even streaming movies every night I can barely get above 200gb. I am sure if I just downloaded the same 4g file over and over again I could hit it, but the point is under normal and even above normal use it is not just satisfactory it is more than I actually need. So complain about the cap all you want, most people do not need more. If you really need more (well here *is* the rub) go elsewhere...if you can. The fact that many municipalities do not allow or offer alternatives is a problem, but that is another discussion.
9. Re:Speed vs. Usage by arth1 · 2011-07-27 05:34 · Score: 1
  
  I find it interesting that the U.S. is number 1 in usage (most unique IP's), but 14th in average connection speed. I would have thought the U.S. would have been a little bit better (speed-wise).
  
  I'm not surprised. The only way the US has been able to stay high up on the charts of broadband connectivity is by redefining broadband to a much lower standard than the rest of the world.
  The US has been surpassed technologically by quite a few countries by now. I think the rest of the world accelerated to a quick pace in the 80s that the US just hasn't been able to keep up with. I remember when I moved to the US in '99, I thought "Cassette tapes? Pagers? Cheques for payment? 4:3 TV? No broadband? Did I move to Burkina Faso or the US?".
  And now, 12 years later, you still find pagers and cassette tapes even though they're less common, most TV is still 4:3, and people still use cheques for payment. And I still can't get broadband where I live. 1500/256 DSL or 0-15000/0-512 cable (averaging at 3 Mbps / 150 Mps) is the best I can get.
10. Re:Speed vs. Usage by Anonymous Coward · 2011-07-27 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  That's a convenient scapegoat, but not really an excuse.
  The argument is that there was a lot of money invested in the original infrastructure. Corporations (the telecoms, cable and other companies) need time to re-coup their investment in these technologies.
  The problem with this argument is that the corporations are no longer competing, just doing all they can to keep the status quo. This means they legislate against new technologies. Need spectrum for a new technology? Too bad for you because these legacy corporations have it all locked up. Want to adopt some new tech that incorporates peer to peer or some form of distributed architecture? Too bad for you, since your company will run into a host of legislation that prevents you from actually providing that service to customers unless you're one of the legacy corporations.
  Emerging economies will depend upon high speed Internet. The fact that the pioneer in almost all of this technology is now dropping to 14th and 15th is fully the fault of corporations artificially maintaining the status quo.
11. Re:Speed vs. Usage by arth1 · 2011-07-27 05:38 · Score: 1
  
  I was also surprised not to see Finland in the top 10 - it seems like every time there is a discussion of broadband access and speeds someone brings up Finland as a shining example of good broadband availability in a relatively sparsely populated nation; apparently, at least from Akamai's view of the 'net, availability (or at least uptake) isn't nearly as extensive as some have suggested.
  ... or it's fast enough and with enough local content that they don't need Akamai as badly.
12. Re:Speed vs. Usage by Anonymous Coward · 2011-07-27 05:42 · Score: 1
  
  Here's my experience with Korean vs American internet speeds. My internet speed in Korea was something like 60mbps average for less than $40 per month with no bandwidth cap as far as I knew, and I downloaded a lot (rough testing with steam downloads- 6-8 megabytes per second, and torrents-similar speeds. Sites like megaupload were around 12-24mbps). I didn't really notice speed drops during busy times either, like I've noticed with Comcast in the U.S. I think the equivalent of that in the US costs about $150-200 per month.
  I don't know how they got their data for this test. Maybe there's tons of rural places in South Korea where people are still on dial-up, but I doubt it. It's a highly urbanized country from what I saw (moreso than Japan) and the availability and q
13. Re:Speed vs. Usage by arth1 · 2011-07-27 05:43 · Score: 2
  
  Emerging economies will depend upon high speed Internet. The fact that the pioneer in almost all of this technology is now dropping to 14th and 15th is fully the fault of corporations artificially maintaining the status quo.
  And the voters who let them and get allergic reactions when anyone suggests that the government should regulate businesses.
14. Re:Speed vs. Usage by Pope · 2011-07-27 05:45 · Score: 1
  
  And now, 12 years later, you still find pagers and cassette tapes even though they're less common, most TV is still 4:3, and people still use cheques for payment. And I still can't get broadband where I live. 1500/256 DSL or 0-15000/0-512 cable (averaging at 3 Mbps / 150 Mps) is the best I can get.
  3Mbps? That is broadband.
  PS every new TV show I watch is 16:9, so I don't know where you're coming from.
  
  --
  It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
15. Re:Speed vs. Usage by PortHaven · 2011-07-27 06:10 · Score: 1
  
  1) Does the study record simply the speed of connection? Because I highly doubt all of China's citizens have access to personal internet connection. Not every American does, but it's pretty darn high. It's easier to have a high avg speed if only a select portion of the populace has access.
  2) Usually, these studies fail to account for geography. For example, a densely populated modern nation like Japan or Hong Kong will score high because most of their population is within a small region and thus less infrastructure is required, maintained or updated.
  In the U.S, we have internet out to many areas that would be considered "rural". For many nations (ie: Canada where 90% of the population lives on the southern border beside the U.S.) the ranking will be higher than the U.S., because we're covering a lot more suburbs, & rural areas.
  So what we really need in order to rank a nation are two additional statistics. Population density and percentage of population in the most dense areas. Why is this important? Canada has a lower population density level than the U.S., but a larger portion of it's population lives in it's denser areas.
  Combine that factor with speed, and percentage of citizens with internet access and you'll find out who really is the top dog for providing it's people access to the internet. I'd wager that America wouldn't show too badly in that measurement.
16. Re:Speed vs. Usage by hedwards · 2011-07-27 06:11 · Score: 1
  
  It's not that they're specifically cheating on the tests it's the way that they use their bandwidth. They offer a much larger amount of bandwidth for the first bit of a download which skews the results and gives the impression that they're providing more bandwidth than they really are.
  http://ask.slashdot.org/story/08/02/19/0434234/Comcast-Cheating-On-Bandwidth-Testing
17. Re:Speed vs. Usage by PortHaven · 2011-07-27 06:13 · Score: 1
  
  Weird...
  I've lived in Connecticut and now live in fairly rural Pennsylvania. I have a 6mb/s connection, but usually far exceed that in speedtests. Granted my mother-in-law is stuck with a 1mb/s wireless cell service for her internet. But seriously, I'm not even paying for the higher data speeds.
  Most urbarn/suburban areas now offer 6mb/s in America.
18. Re:Speed vs. Usage by arth1 · 2011-07-27 06:16 · Score: 1
  
  3Mbps? That is broadband.
  No, it isn't. By the CCITT definition, you need to be faster than PRI rate, both ways. I.e. it's not enough to have a typical download speed exceeding T1 speeds if the typical upload speed is only a fraction of that. That won't let you do video-conferencing, for example, or use a remote desktop in any meaningful way (X11 lbx was nice to get around that)
  Also, you should not measure the maximum speed, but the CIR. Which for cable is zero. A 0-8 Mbps line is not broadband, but a 2 Mbps line is.
19. Re:Speed vs. Usage by houghi · 2011-07-27 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  The reason at least Belgium has so much fast connections was due to pricing. Dialup you need to pay by the minute. Last price I recall was 45BEF (Just over 1EUR) per hour. That is on top of your account.
  With ADSL I pay now 10EUR for the ADSL connection (As I MUST have a phone number as well)
  So the moment you would be 10 hours or more online, ADSL would be cheaper. So the step to ADSL was 'forced' by the single phone company. Cable was not an option at that moment.
  Yet what does speed matter if you can't realy use it, because your provider has installed a limit on the amount of how much you can use?
  
  --
  Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
20. Re:Speed vs. Usage by swb · 2011-07-27 06:42 · Score: 1
  
  I'm no fan of the telecommunications/infotainment oligarchy, but 10 years ago I paid $85/month for 768k/768k DSL and one static IP. That's $112 in current purchasing power.
  I now pay $69 for 10m/3m with 5 static IPs. That's a 33% reduction in price for nearly 7 times the product.
  How is that not an improvement?
21. Re:Speed vs. Usage by arth1 · 2011-07-27 06:50 · Score: 1
  
  Also, the CIR for all residential connections is justifiably zero
  This is not true, and not even true for the US. If you get ISDN or non-PPPoE (bridged ethernet) DSL, it's not zero. Of course, that is to the head end, and the rest of the infrastructure might lower it, but if you and your neighbour both have bridged SDSL, you should be able to maintain full speed between the two at all times.
  As for the rest of the world outside the US, in many places you can buy 10 and 100 Mbps connections directly to your head end. Fiber and dedicated copper pairs. For less than what cable and DSL costs in the US.
22. Re:Speed vs. Usage by thetoadwarrior · 2011-07-27 07:09 · Score: 1
  
  ~There's always some excuse. Europe had copper lines shoved down in old tight passages and they managed. Oh of course there will be the excuse that European countries are so tiny!. But if you compare states with similar densities they still come up short against a lot of European countries. The US just isn't interested in being the best at anything and seems quite happy with companies maximising profits at the consumer's expense.
23. Re:Speed vs. Usage by thetoadwarrior · 2011-07-27 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  But then the job creators won't create all the wonder jobs we have.
24. Re:Speed vs. Usage by omnichad · 2011-07-27 07:17 · Score: 1
  
  Not the real issue. How much do you think it takes to run fiber optic cable 2 feet to the next subscriber in a densely populated country like China?
25. Re:Speed vs. Usage by bhcompy · 2011-07-27 07:27 · Score: 1
  
  Europe was also very far behind on adoption for broadband. While I was enjoying unlimited cable internet and DSL here in 2000, when I spent the summer in Britain and France laughing at their advertising for hourly dialup.
26. Re:Speed vs. Usage by bhcompy · 2011-07-27 07:28 · Score: 1
  
  That is the second factor involved. South Korea, for instance, has one of the top average offerings for consumers for speed. Very dense and didn't modernize that infrastructure until very recently.
27. Re:Speed vs. Usage by thetoadwarrior · 2011-07-27 07:45 · Score: 1
  
  Yep on dial-up Europe was behind. It was always expensive & per minute and 2000 and yeah broadband would have only been starting off around that time. I believe NTL would been just offering cable internet in villages outside of Cambridge. But one thing they did was invest heavily and grew quite quickly.
  
  I think Europe benefits by having more competition. Had things been left to only BT the UK would probably still be on 1 mb broadband and the reason there is more competition because the government steps in and ensures it exists. The US is lacking any sort of controls to enforce competition.
28. Re:Speed vs. Usage by StormReaver · 2011-07-27 08:38 · Score: 1
  
  ...we've been sticking our fingers in our ears and pretending that our telecommunications oligopoly-with-local-monopoly-characteristics is a vibrant free market...
  Who's "we"? Most Americans will eagerly point out how little choice we have in phone and Internet service, and how we're being vastly overcharged and vastly underserviced. The only people who seems to not be listening are regulators and politicians. No one else is pretending that America's current telecom situation is anything other than unmitigated crap.
29. Re:Speed vs. Usage by bhcompy · 2011-07-27 09:48 · Score: 1
  
  Is the Chinese govt financing it or does private industry shoulder the burden? What kind of wage and permit cost differential are we looking at(since that is the major part of the cost, particularly if you're laying underground cables)?
  
  People forget that Sprint spent billions deploying the ION network over a decade ago. Blew away every other consumer offering at the time(something like 5-6x faster than my cable internet at the time) and affordable, but hardly anyone switched over. Few years later they shuttered the service because they couldn't cover maintenance. Set back speed growth for consumers for a long time. Took many years before another national push for a service that was far and away faster than all the rest came about(FIOS)
30. Re:Speed vs. Usage by sjames · 2011-07-27 12:37 · Score: 1
  
  About as much as for a high rise apartment in New York?
31. Re:Speed vs. Usage by Plainswind · 2011-07-27 15:40 · Score: 1
  
  "I was also surprised not to see Finland in the top 10 - it seems like every time there is a discussion of broadband access and speeds someone brings up Finland as a shining example of good broadband availability in a relatively sparsely populated nation; apparently, at least from Akamai's view of the 'net, availability (or at least uptake) isn't nearly as extensive as some have suggested" Akamai do not serve the nordic countries very well. No local servers, and I suspect that they deliberately cap bandwidth use from us too. On my connection, where I can get 11.5MB/s download speed from at 19:00 swedish time when downloading the EVE client from CCP(via LLNW), grab stuff from Sunet, Funet or similar at the same speeds too, or get 8MB/s or so from some other sources, if I have to hit an Akamai server, I'm glad if I get 1.5MB/s
32. Re:Speed vs. Usage by Fremandn · 2011-07-27 19:24 · Score: 1
  
  To be honest I've never understood this argument. Is it that companies haven't made their returns on the copper yet, companies find the path of least resistance to be less speedy than for new infrastructure, or that these markets are in greater flux creating more competition which spurs innovation. Of course, it could be something else, but this is what came to my air bubble head just now.
  
  --
  I'm NaN, I'm a free variable.
33. Re:Speed vs. Usage by Voyager529 · 2011-07-28 02:45 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know the first thing about Chinese building codes, but comparing stereotypes to stereotypes...
  --New York high-rises would likely be SO dense with computing devices that you'd likely need to invest in half a central office in the basement of the high-rise just to handle the backhaul. You'd need a stack of permits so high you'd likely need a consulting firm just to oversee that they're followed. You'd need to convince the building owners to let you run cable in the building, and those guys are usually so tight-fisted that stereotypically they'd need to have a lawsuit filed against them for a tenant's child drowning to have them fix a burst pipe. All of that assumes that you're not in the "territory" of your direct competitor, who didn't somehow weasel the zoning ordinances in such a way that you can't possibly make the requirements anyway.
  --Even in a Chinese high rise, mobile internet connectivity outnumbers stuff requiring a cable to connect, so less backhaul gear would likely be needed. Wires would be stapled to the wall in a week and no one would care, including the building owner and the local zoning board, if there is one.
  Like I said, I'm comparing stereotypes here, so there's probably plenty of case-by-case examples where permits are easy to acquire in New York and an impossible to deal with high rise owner in Bejing. However, it stands to reason that overall, there's simply less red tape in China to deal with than there is in America when it comes to the kind of infrastructure building being discussed here. .Personally, I can't get FiOS where I live because Cablevision has such a death grip on my local township that it's prohibitively expensive for Verizon to run the fiber.
34. Re:Speed vs. Usage by bhcompy · 2011-07-28 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  No, it's more that if it's not broke, don't fix it. The infrastructure is already there, the people are already customers, so why spend billions tearing it all out to replace with fiber?
The Net? by bhcompy · 2011-07-27 04:43 · Score: 2

Akamai are the Praetorians? Do they hide pi symbols on all of the websites they control?
1. Re:The Net? by cashman73 · 2011-07-27 05:29 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Most people here also weren't born when Admiral Ackbar muttered his famous, "It's a Trap!" line in Return of the Jedi, either, but that doesn't stop them from turning it into the Greatest Internet Meme Ever! ;-)
Re:Instantaneous Telecommunication System by ColdWetDog · 2011-07-27 04:57 · Score: 1

While that's likely true (the caffeine levels are probably suboptimal) I guess I forgot the 'for humorous purposes only, not to be taken internally or seriously for that matter' disclaimer.

--
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Re:The Net according to AC by derGoldstein · 2011-07-27 05:06 · Score: 1

I thought that 9/11 was planned by Republicans as an excuse to invade oil-land, and Zionists were focusing on gradually replacing all seats of power in the US with sympathizers. Clearly I haven't been keeping up with the news...

--
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Re:Instantaneous Telecommunication System by Jeng · 2011-07-27 05:07 · Score: 1

Have you read some of his posting history?
They are interesting in a way I am not able to explain yet. Not quite a schizophrenic mind set, but definitely not part of our reality.

--
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Re:Wrong photo by hawguy · 2011-07-27 05:36 · Score: 1

Very misleading that the cover photo from the gizmag article has nothing to do with the report, or even with the Internet. It's a photo of earth taken from space:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1438
The caption on the photo is:
Akamai's State of the Internet report provides a global snapshot of global Internet use
And the photo does appear to be a snapshot of the globe, so it doesn't seem all that misleading. I think it's fair to say that where the light appears in their photo is where the internet users are. What if they had included a hand drawn caricature of the globe? Would that also be misleading?
Re:The Net according to AC by tripleevenfall · 2011-07-27 05:45 · Score: 1

Warning: those who deny the existence of a Zionist conspiracy may be Zionist conspirators themselves.
Noscript! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-07-27 05:47 · Score: 1

And Akamai was why I installed Noscript. Any given heavy traffic site would ~mostly load, but be 'waiting' on akamai links to finish, thus 'slowing down' my internet usage. Yes, I'm using generalities here, but the point remains. I don't need to see every damn ad and have the counters at akamai log it. For a while there, I was damning them daily. These days? Not so much.
Thanks Noscript! And adblock! And Flashblock!
Most users with speed at 40th by sgt+scrub · 2011-07-27 05:47 · Score: 1

Wow. The US has the most users but speeds barely rank in the top 40 with other nations. I wonder who has the greediest bastards owning the ISPs.

--
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
1. Re:Most users with speed at 40th by silentace · 2011-07-27 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  I don't have any references to show but I have lived in 3 different continents and multiple countries (so my experiance is what I am referencing). The avarage american city/county/state is by far exceedingly more spread out than any town/country I have ever lived in (outside the US) We build houses on acres of land while many countries have a fraction of our property sizes. The reason I say all that is it is a whole lot simpler/easier to get connections to 100's or 1000's of homes in non US countries then it is in the US.
  
  Do you think an ISP would be willing to spend 1000s of dollars to connect 2/3 rural homes in the country? I doubt it. Those users then use their trusty old analog (maybe even digital) telephone line to get very slow speed DSL or even worse... dial up. Down goes our average speeds. With every town like New York City, you have 100's of 1000's of rural homes in the US that are miles from any kind of "real" internet. I know in japan, entire cities have been lined with fiber making the intra country internet connection gigabit to the home. While in the US we share copper cable lines and deal with slower speed DSL/etc.
  
  I don't know everything about how it all works and I may have explained/misunderstood a few concepts here.... but overall the idea, I think, is pretty simple on why we are so low on the list.
2. Re:Most users with speed at 40th by Anonymous Coward · 2011-07-27 09:23 · Score: 1
  
  Do you think an ISP would be willing to spend 1000s of dollars to connect 2/3 rural homes in the country? I doubt it.
  
  Do you think ISPs were required to spend their own money in the first place? Of course not. Over here in the Yoo Ess Eh, our slimy politicians tend to grant monopoly/cartel statuses to a select few providers per town, city, et cetera. In return, we're supposed to get decent infrastructure out of the deal. We don't, and the cuntdribblers we elect don't really give a rat's ass, since they've already received their personal payoff.
  And let's not even go in to who it was who paid for the US's telephone infrastructure in the first place.
  As for the rest, fuck me, you can't be serious if you think various Scandanavian countries have more people per capita than the US. Fuck, I lived in the middle of a sprawl, a mere hour and a half from NYC, and the best I could get was fucking 5/1Mb, which was in reality 2/1Mb, with a cap of 40GB/month.
3. Re:Most users with speed at 40th by dbc · 2011-07-27 10:00 · Score: 1
  
  So explain to me why, when I live in the middle of Silicon Valley, on the tiniest lot I have ever had for any house I ever lived in, why is it that I can't get a good connection for a reasonable price? I have DSL, last mile by PacBell (because it has to be), but ISP is Sonic.net (because Sonic is mega-clueful and PacBell is a pack of greedy dipshits). But my DSL rates are not all that great. By your logic, if *anyplace* should be able to get a good connection with competition among providers it should be an area of tiny lots and high incomes.
  I admit that I have more choice than others -- I could use PacBell (barf), Comcast (that doesn't even pass the giggle test, especially since I don't watch TV so the bundled price for cable is pointless), or some other ISPs that use PacBell's last mile of copper. But there would be no difference in speed among any of the DSL-based ISP choices.
4. Re:Most users with speed at 40th by moortak · 2011-07-27 10:05 · Score: 1
  
  The problem with that line of thought is that our high density areas do poorly when compared to other countries.
  
  --
  Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
Re:Instantaneous Telecommunication System by arbulus · 2011-07-27 06:39 · Score: 1

Bloody hell. I think that entire page is written in h1 tags. Apparently this person has never heard of a CMS (though that's the least of their worries, I suppose).
Canada? by DarthVain · 2011-07-27 07:35 · Score: 1

Oh that's right, we suck. We were on one, but got bumped... by Spain. Spain!
1. Re:Canada? by Skuld-Chan · 2011-07-27 10:58 · Score: 1
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFs5l9K--7M
Wired and wireless connections mixed together by CAPSLOCK2000 · 2011-07-27 07:50 · Score: 1

Keep in mind that this report throws wired and wireless connections together.
Imagine a modern with one 100mbit connection to the family PC and 5 mobile phones (barely 4mbit) would have an average connection speed of only 20mbit.
Re:akamai=useless by jnpcl · 2011-07-27 08:49 · Score: 1

Just because something is popular doesn't make it any less shitty. Examples: Twilight, Justin Bieber, PayPal.
These are neat to look at. by generic · 2011-07-27 09:18 · Score: 2

http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/visualizing_akamai.html

--
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
US has high speed to 97% of population? BS! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-07-27 13:56 · Score: 1

I would like to know how they figure that many of the US states have over 97% of the people connected to high speed, when I know for a fact that large portions of Arkansas and Oklahoma don't have anything higher than dial-up available(unless you count satellite*). I know that one of the GOV reports was playing games with the numbers(if zip code 12345 has high speed to one house, then the whole area has high speed). Just because a larger town in the middle of a zip code has high speed, the suburbs(or further out), which is a lot of people, still don't have anything other than dial-up.
I bet they are fudging the numbers again by saying, those people could get satellite connections. The prices, data rates, and data caps on those connections are ridiculous.
Also, just for reference, I live in South Korea and when they say it is 100mbit to the house you get those speeds. Unlike the US where they say you will get "up to 5mb/s". The new Ubuntu/Fedora/BSD etc comes out and I download the latest CD in under a minute and can upload the torrent for weeks at a few MB(yes bytes) per second and no one questions why I am using so much bandwidth. All for approximately $15 a month.
And for those people that say US is fast enough, how are we supposed to progress if we stop at "fast enough/good enough" just because you don't use IPTV or streaming HD shows and movies, doesn't mean no one should have the ability.
Re:Gizmagoowhatzitnow? by morethanapapercert · 2011-07-27 13:56 · Score: 1

Only if you love gadgets even more than the average /.'er, that is to say, with a degree of obsession unhealthy in an adult.

--
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Re:The Net according to AC by That+Guy+From+Mrktng · 2011-07-27 14:00 · Score: 1

by derGoldstein

ionists were focusing on gradually replacing all seats of power in the US with sympathizers

Clearly I haven't been keeping up with the news
Seems legit ;)
On a more on topic comment: You forgot Apple evangelists, Linux zealots and Winblow$ Luzerz, Also a debate betwen C++ and Java fanboys while exploring VI and emacs connections to goat.cx and how Google knows it all and it's going to show your donkey-midget-tentacles-porn searches to YOUR WIFE!.
Sometimes I think slashdot is like a polymorphic meme.
Re:Akamai in my pants by That+Guy+From+Mrktng · 2011-07-27 14:01 · Score: 1

You may want a doctor to check that spotty panorama