State of the Internet Report Sheds Light on Internet Trends, Attacks

by Sean Michael Kerner

Once again, China has been identified as the top originating country by IP address for attack traffic.

In a shift from the second quarter, Telnet is now the most attacked server port, followed in second place by Port 445, which is used for Microsoft Directory services. Port 80 used for HTTP Web traffic has fallen from first place in the second quarter to third place in the third quarter.

In the third quarter, the number of reported distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks held steady from the second quarter of 2014. The third-quarter 2014 DDoS figure is a decline of 22 percent from the third quarter of 2013.

The enterprise sector was the top DDoS attack sector in the third quarter, representing 39 percent of all DDoS attacks seen by Akamai. The third-quarter enterprise DDoS numbers were up from the second quarter, where the enterprise accounted for 30 percent of DDoS attacks.

The global average connection speed was reported at 4.5M bps in the third quarter, which is actually a decline of 2.8 percent from the second quarter, though still up by 25 percent year-over-year.

The great state of Delaware once again holds down the top spot in the U.S. as the state with the fastest average connection speed.

Next-generation IPv6 address adoption is starting to pick up with carriers around the globe. Fifty-six percent of Verizon Wireless’ traffic in the third quarter was IPv6-based.