On top of this, says the internet caching specialist, during the third quarter of 2010, over 533 million unique IP addresses, from 235 countries/regions, connected to its network – 20% more than in the same quarter a year ago.
The Top 10 regions/countries – which account for around 70% of the globally observed IP addresses – again demonstrated strong yearly growth.
Spain (ranked #10) achieved 15% year-on-year growth, followed by the UK (ranked #6) up 12%. Germany (ranked #4) saw 5.9% growth, whilst France (ranked #5) was up 9.9% year-on-year.
Overall, the Q3 2010 state of the internet report claims that average connection speeds in Europe continued to increase and strong double-digit percentage changes were seen in the year-on-year figures for Romania (12%), Netherlands (14%), and Latvia (27%).
Of the six European countries ranked in the Top 10 regions/countries, Akamai says that Romania once again led the way with an average connection speed of 7.0 Mbps, followed by the Netherlands (6.3 Mbps), Latvia (6.0 Mbps), Czech Republic (5.4 Mbps), Switzerland (5.3 Mbps), and Denmark (5.0 Mbps).
Analysis of attacking IP traffic monitored by the firm's servers reveals that the US was the top source of observed attack traffic, followed by Russia.
Together, says the report, these two countries accounted for just over 20% of observed attack traffic.
"However, the aggregated continental figures reveal Europe was again responsible for the highest percentage (35%) of observed attacks in the third quarter (down from 39% in the second quarter)", noted the study.
With regard to attack traffic from mobile providers, Akamai says that Italy remained in the top spot (28%) while the UK saw the largest quarterly increase (nearly 80%) in observed traffic from known mobile network providers.