The world has come a long way since the internet was made publicly available in — 30 years ago now. Nine years later at the turn of the millennium, million people around the world had access to the internet.
Fast-forward two decades more to today, over six out of every ten, or It should come as no surprise that, as the largest and most populous continent, Asia is home to the majority of global internet users. In fact, nearly one quarter This is followed by South Asia with Most of the fastest growing online populations are based in Africa, with the Republic of the Congo leading the charge — as of January , the number of internet users in the country grew percent year-over-year.
There are currently 4. That means that out of the 5. In fact, mobile phones are the most popular device with which users access the internet — This is especially likely because of the increasing speeds of mobile internet connections, which increased by 22 percent from to As an ecommerce business owner, you may be interested to know just how internet users are spending their time on ecommerce activities online.
The latest figures show that Online shopping and browsing aside, social media is also where internet users spend a large bulk of their time. In fact, the average person spends two hours and 22 minutes a day on social media, with most of this time spent on Facebook and TikTok.
Not only is China a major player in ecommerce sales , but it is also the country with the highest number of internet users in the world, home to million internet users Internet World Stats, Of those, nearly all This is impressive growth for China, which, back in , had just In other words, the number of internet users in China has multiplied nearly 38 times in less than two decades.
So much so that 81 percent of US adults go online on a daily basis Pew Research, Having a mobile internet connection appears to be one of the biggest if not the biggest determining factors of whether US adults go online.
More than nine out of ten of them do so every single day. Unsurprisingly, youngsters appear to be the leading group of internet users in the US. Nearly half of all US adults aged between 18 and 29 go online frequently throughout the day. Google Chrome browser is the leader in the mobile internet browser market, with a share of Today, there are more than 2. Jeff Ogden. There are two basic ways people can log onto the internet: through a fixed broadband connection at home or in an office and via a wireless connection on a cell phone or tablet.
This data from the International Telecommunications Union shows how popular fixed internet access is around the world. It shows internet access is widespread in most parts of the world, but is still fairly scarce in much of sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Fixed internet access allows multiple devices in a customer's home to access the internet. Fixed connections are also ideal for streaming-video services such as Netflix because they tend to have greater capacity than wireless networks.
This map shows the percentage of consumers around the world who have mobile internet access note that the colors on this map are not directly comparable to the previous map. In the developed world, people usually got fixed internet access first and obtained mobile internet devices later. But some developing countries are skipping the construction of fixed broadband networks altogether. This is cost-effective because a single cell phone tower can provide service to hundreds of customers.
For examle, 2. Mobile internet access can have profound implications for people in isolated areas. Farmers can use mobile phones to learn about recent market developments, increasing the amount they can get for their crops. Some mobile phone operators also offer sophisticated payment capabilities, allowing people who don't have access to the conventional banking system to make electronic payments.
A few wealthy countries, including Japan, South Korea, and Sweden, that have more mobile internet subscriptions than people. Some customers have two more or smartphones, tablets, or other connected mobile devices. Internet access is a lot faster in some places than others. According to Speedtest. The United States clocks in at number 30, with average speeds of 24 Mbps.
These figures are worth taking with a grain of salt because they're based on a self-selected sample. Users must visit the speedtest. Still, the data permits interesting cross-country comparisons. For the internet to work, everyone needs a unique Internet Protocol IP address. To coordinate the distribution of these addresses, the internet is broken up into five zones.
Each zone has been assigned hundreds of millions of IP addresses to manage. Unfortunately, the original internet architecture, called IPv4, only allows for about 4 billion addresses, and the network has nearly exhausted the supply.
The problem is particularly growing in fast-growing regions like Asia. Engineers have developed a long-run solution to this problem: switching to a new internet standard called IPv6. IPv6 offers such a large number of potential addresses that the world will never run out.
But adoption of IPv6 has been slow. Today, the overwhelming majority of internet traffic uses the old standard. But with few IPv4 addresses left, people joining the internet in the future will have little choice but to use IPv6.
IP addresses have a numeric format like this: But it's easier for people to remember domain names such as vox. The domain name system DNS acts like a directory system, telling computers wanting to view a website like www. The system is hierarchical: the. Domains like. But other countries are more likely to use what's known as country-code top level domains ccTLD.
Every country in the world has a ccTLD. This map shows the ccTLDs in Europe. Even very small countries get ccTLDs.
Here's a close-up of the area around Australia and the many small island nations that have their own domain names. Some of these countries realized that they could make a lot of money if they opened their domains to foreigners. The result: popular websites like last. Today the fastest way to transmit information over long distances is with fiber optics — long, thin strands of glass that carry information as pulses of light.
Because a single fiber can transmit as much as billion bits per second Gbps, about ten thousand times faster than a typical home broadband connection and a cable can contain hundreds of fibers, a single cable can have enough capacity for the communications of millions of users.
All that data has proven irresistible to the National Security Agency, which has developed a variety of techniques to scoop up data as it flows through fiber optic cables. Fiber optic cables are relatively fragile. In , two fiber optic cables that connect Middle Eastern countries to India were cut, leading to disruptions for many internet users in Egypt and India. Some press reports suggested that the damage was caused by a ship's anchor being dragged along the bottom of the Mediterranean, but the Egyptian authorities have said no ships were in the area at the time the cables were damaged.
The exact cause of the outage remains a mystery. Sometimes internet access is disrupted due to accidents. In other cases, it's deliberate government policy. For example, during the Tahrir Square protests, the Egyptian government cut off Egypt's connections to the rest of the internet.
This was possible because Egypt's links to the outside world were controlled by a handful of large companies. This map shows which countries have few enough links to the outside world to be at risk of this kind of censorship.
Some countries, such as the United States, have dozens of links to the outside world, making a coordinated shutdown of the US internet almost impossible. Others have many fewer links and are correspondingly more vulnerable to censorship. In April , Syria's largest city, Aleppo, disappeared from the internet for several hours, one of several outages that have occurred during the civil war there. The southern parts of Syria receive internet access from undersea fiber optic cables, but Aleppo accesses the internet via a land connection to Turkey.
It's not clear if the outage was due to accidental damage from fighting in the area, or whether the regime of Bashar al-Assad had deliberately disrupted rebel-held Aleppo's internet access.
As the Washington Post's Andrea Peterson puts it , "Internet outages in Syria have a curious history of happening at times convenient for the Assad regime. Zakir Durumeric, Eric Wustrow, and J. Alex Halderman.
When Superstorm Sandy hit New Jersey in October , it knocked a number of computers off the internet. A team of computer scientists at the University of Michigan had recently built ZMap , a tool that allowed them to scan every computer on the internet in less than an hour.
That allowed them to make this map, which shows locations where the number of web servers running the SSL encryption software declined by 30 percent or more, which turns out to be a good proxy for heavy storm damage.
Freedom House. In most Western countries, the internet is a free-speech zone where ordinary people can express themselves without fear of censorship. But that's not true everywhere. This map from Freedom House details which countries respect freedom of speech and which countries flout it. Cuba and several countries in Southeast Asia and the Middle East engage in pervasive censorship and are marked in purple.
China, for example, has a "great firewall" that makes it difficult for its citizens to read about sensitive topics such as the Falun Gong or the Tiananmen Square massacre. Other countries have a partially free internet. In Russia, for example, the government has engaged in more aggressive internet censorship since Vladimir Putin returned to power in Mother Jones. The social media sites Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are frequent targets for censorious governments.
This map from Mother Jones shows which countries restrict their users from accessing these sites. China doesn't just block access to Western social media sites, it has also cultivated home-grown alternatives that are under the thumb of the Chinese authorities.
These social media sites enable users to engage in relatively unfettered discusion, but the providers are required to participate in an elaborate monitoring and censorship regime to ensure that sensitive topics do not receive widespread discussion.
The privatization of the internet transformed what had been an obscure academic network into a hotbed of commercial innovation. In the late s, hundreds of new companies sprouted up to take advantage of these opportunities. In certain areas where broadband connection is not yet offered, a satellite Internet option may be available.
Similar to wireless access, satellite connection utilizes a modem. ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network allows users to send data, voice and video content over digital telephone lines or standard telephone wires. The installation of an ISDN adapter is required at both ends of the transmission—on the part of the user as well as the Internet access provider. As you decide what Internet connection is the best fit for your needs, you may wish to narrow down your selection based on your preferred download and upload speeds, or based on deals and pricing options.
Reliably fast speeds and comprehensive coverage make it easier than ever to stream your favorite TV shows and movies, share photos, chat with friends and play games online. Learn more about the EBB Program to see if you qualify. Get the reliable Internet speed you need at a price you'll love. Plus, enjoy the most in-home coverage and the control you need for the ultimate WiFi experience. Understanding The Differences Between Internet Connections When determining which type of Internet speed and Internet connection type is right for you or your family, it's important to understand the distinction between each connection.
Mobile Many cell phone and smartphone providers offer voice plans with Internet access. Dial-Up Dial-up connections require users to link their phone line to a computer in order to access the Internet. Broadband This high-speed Internet connection is provided through either cable or telephone companies.
DSL DSL, which stands for Digital Subscriber Line, uses existing 2-wire copper telephone line connected to one's home so service is delivered at the same time as landline telephone service.
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