Akamai have published their quarterly "State of the Internet" report for Q4 2008. Of interest are the numbers for broadband adoption and average broadband speed for the major regions:

Australia: 50% adoption, 2808 kbps average
Asia: 45%, 4616 kbps average
Africa: 13%, 1176 kbps average
Europe: 70%, 3616 kbps average
South America: 17%, 1312 kbps average
North America: 61%, 3896 kbps average

The report also includes data about a bunch of interesting Internet things, such as attack traffic (the US is #1, followed by China and Sweden, with ports 445, 80, 139 and 22 the most heavily attacked - only 0.36% came from Australia, so nice work everyone!), social networking downtime (Twitter is miles in the lead), fastest average Internet speeds by country (South Korea: 15.0Mbps, Japan: 7.0Mbps, Hong Kong: 6.9Mbps, Romania: 5.7Mbps). It's heavily focused on the US, but it's an interesting read.

Try hovering over the dots on the Australian map.

SaintLucia (UQ)
Monash
Bentley (Curtin)

whats up with that? I thought it was an old wives tale that the net went through the sandstone universities?

last edited by mongie at 12:04:12 27/May/09

I was told in 1995 when I got the Internet, that the basement of the Prentice centre at UQ holds the backbone for QLD's Internet. Whatever that means.

I was told that too, but I didn't think it was true anymore...

(thats where AARNET is apparently... I don't _really_ understand what AARNET is these days in relation to the greater "internet").

a wizard did it

Where are Akamai getting their stats from?

Prentice operate a DSL service as a layer 2 reseller; so, given commercial ISP interests, I suspect, aren't likely to divulge this information, perhaps Universities are much more open about statistical metrics? (this would seem logical).

Where are Akamai getting their stats from?

they are basically the worlds biggest internet mirror

they are the internet.

Ok, but this still doesn't explain why Curtin / Monash / St Lucia were chosen.
An IP flow by intuition can be traced back to a state / suburb / isp, but IP ranges are given by APNIC to enterprises; these are typically dynamically assigned, this is why 000 is so difficult on Voip. They must be correlating their stats with some access providers.

I think you'll find akami just happen to have their s*** hosted in those places
more often than not when google or some other provider knows a rough idea of where you are, they are only getting back to a router which is a few hops from you

like anyone on the northside using optus cable would know, fitzg1 etc is a pretty central hub

So, AARNET peer with AKAMAI? Thus StLucia?

What does the percentage of adoption represent? Is it based on population or purely geographical?

So 50% of people still have dial-up? OUCH

What internet?
Most australian states still have pedal power dial up. "What is that broadband it sounds interesting gee i hope we get that soon". Hurry ruddy I'm getting tired but holy crap I'm fit.

So 50% of people still have dial-up? OUCH

Not basing this on any evidence, but I doubt 50% of the population is using dial-up, since a good number of people just don't have the internet full stop.

I used to only see the akamai name in downloads off MS on occasion & wonder what it was, now I'm seeing it all over the place. I wonder what would happen if akamai went down, would the internet collapse? Seems everyone relies on them pretty heavily.

(thats where AARNET is apparently... I don't _really_ understand what AARNET is these days in relation to the greater "internet").

I have a text book at home that says "The Internet is called AARNET in Australia". Even internet is spelt with a capital.

"but I doubt 50% of the population is using dial-up, since a good number of people just don't have the internet full stop."

OMG! That is worse than dial-up!

Quick answer to some AARNet Questions, you can fund more detail at the AARNet website www.aarnet.edu.au

- Yes AARNet started the Internet in Australia and ran the backbone and peering services for the first 5 years or so before selling it to Telstra (Now bigpond). AARNet2 was a microwave based network. AARNet3 is a fibre optic based network.

- AARNet is still one of the biggest carriers (by volume) in Australia with multiple 10G links between capital cities. There are 2 PoP sites in each of Bris, Melb, Syd, Canb, Adel, Perth servicing all 40 Universities, CSIRO, many research organisations, Several TAFEs and some schools.

- They do peer with Akamai, MS, Google, ABC, internode, WAIX ... etc and are one of the top peering organisations in the world.

- Unfortunately you can't get an AARNet fibre direct into you home :(

I like the fact Africa has speeds above 1Meg. Surpassed my wildest imagination.

Achievement Unlocked:

Beating Africa's Internet.

AARNet hosts a Akamai cluster in one of its Sydney POPs. The amount of traffic pulled by our mostly-university customers exceeds 1Gbps most days. Ourselves, Internode and iiNet have a "mutual recognition" agreement between our respective Akamai clusters so that we use these neighbouring caches if one cache has a problem, preventing that 1Gbps from suddenly being sourced from overseas. We make the Akamai cluster available to our peers in circumstances where that doesn't cost us much (eg, not to our overseas peers).

The exact locations St Lucia, Curtin and Monash don't really match up to AARNet POPs. They do of course match up to major AARNet customers. Given the privacy conditions which the Telecommunications Act places upon ISPs revealing customer information it is a tad disappointing to see one of our suppliers revealing information down to this level. I'll be taking that up with Akamai.

cool, thanks for taking the time to post. I am fascinated as to the path that lead you here though :)

all roads lead to qgl

Speaking of st lucia/UQ, is it true there are tunnels under/around the great court? A friend believes he's found the entrance, it's big enough to stand up and walk around in.

Speaking of strange tunnels, I discovered a staircase leading undergroud that has no entrance at griffith GC the other day. Could see stairs going down through a small window, but there was no way to get to them :S

trog, Glen appears to be from SA (so the AARNET website says) therefore I blame trix for telling him about this thread :p

all roads lead to qgl AusGamers

Fixed.

all roads lead to AusGamers, which in turn leads to qgl, which in turn leads to kos' mum.

To quote a once great philosopher...

But seriously frakture why are you such a d******* lately?

;D