How fast are Internet connections across the world? How fast are they in your country?

This article examines the real-world connection speeds for people in the top 50 countries on the Internet, i.e. the countries with the most Internet users.

This list of countries ranges from China at number 1 with 420 million Internet users, and Denmark at number 50 with 4.75 million Internet users. We’ve included this ranking within parenthesis next to each country in the charts below for those who want to know.

These 50 countries together have more than 1.8 billion Internet users.

Why connection speeds matter

Why would you be interested in knowing how Internet connection speeds are distributed among various countries? Here’s why:

• As an Internet user, you can get an idea of how your own Internet connection speed holds up against others in your country.
• As a Web service provider or website owner, you get an idea of what kind of Internet connection speeds your customers are likely to have in different countries. This is highly relevant if you want them to have a positive user experience. This naturally applies to web developers in general as well, who should be well aware of the capacity of people’s Internet connections.

Read more »

Peer-to-peer traffic management was a hot topic at this year’s NXTcomm convention in Las Vegas, as keynote speakers and telecommunications industry panelists highlighted new methods for handling P2P traffic crunches.

Internet service providers’ methods for managing P2P traffic have come under intense scrutiny in recent months after the Associated Press reported last year that Comcast Corp. was actively interfering with P2P users’ ability to upload files by sending TCP RST packets that informed them that their connection would have to be reset.

Because the RST packets did not appear to be sent directly from the company, critics accused Comcast of deceiving its customers and actively blocking their ability to share files online.

Although Comcast has said it doesn’t actively block any P2P protocols and merely “delays” P2P uploads during times of heavy congestion, the company has agreed to change its P2P traffic management policies and stop targeting traffic such as that of BitTorrent. Read more »