Using the visitor trending data collected and shared by StatCounter, I have undertaken a general analysis of browser distribution by global region. These metrics are collected using the embedded tags that StatCounter customers embed on their site to collect visitor metrics for their own use.

US data shows that MSIE 7.0 is in a dominant position, with Firefox 3.0 in the 25% range of market share. This trend extends into the North American data, which is heavily influenced by the US trend.

MSIE 8.0, still reports a lower distribution than Firefox 2.0. This data is most likely based on the usage of MSIE 8.0 RC1 version, as MSIE 8.0 was only released in GA last week. It is highly probable that these stats will change in the very near future with the release of MSIE 8.0 to Windows Update.

In the EU, where fear and loathing of Microsoft runs deep and true, Firefox 3.0 is approaching parity with MSIE 7.0. Also, the perennially favoured native son Opera makes a very strong showing with their 9.6 release.

Asia is a Web designers nightmare, with MSIE 6.0 continuing to be the most reported browser. This is concerning, not simply for design reasons, but for web compliance reasons. Effectively Asia has throttled Web development to an old warhorse, but to such a degree that there must be some overriding advantage to using this browser.

As an example, the statistical comparison of four Asia nations is broken out below. We’ll start with Japan where MSIE 7.0 has a clear lead in the statistics.

However, when China (People’s Republic), India, and South Korea are added into the analysis, the pull towards MSIE 6.0 is massive.

This trend needs to be studied in greater detail in order to understand why MSIE 6.0 is so popular. Is it because of licensing? Continued use of Windows 2000? Compromised computers? The data doesn’t provide any clear or compelling reason for this trend.

Moving to Oceania shows a return to the trend of MSIE 7.0 being the predominant browser with Firefox in second place, with these two browsers showing a substantial lead over the remaining field.

South America sees MSIE 7.0 as having the largest market share, followed by MSIE 6.0 and Firefox 3.0. Effectively there are no other browsers with substantial market share at present.

These statistics show that the three most dominant browser platforms by market share are the two MSIE platforms followed by Firefox 3.0. This is likely to change with the MSIE 8.0 GA last week and its predicted release to the masses via Windows Update in the near future.

However, the release of MSIE 8.0 may not be as exponential as is predicted. Corporate IT policies, which have been slow to embrace MSIE 7.0, are likely not going to make a giant leap to MSIE 8.0 overnight. Adoption among the general population will also depend on the ability of existing Web applications to adapt to a more standards-compliant browser platform.

Noticeably absent from most of these statistics is Safari in a position to challenge the three leading browsers. This indicates that even hardcore Mac users continue to use Firefox as their primary Web application and browsing platform. StatCounter backs this up by indicating that within their data, 8.36% of visitors from the USA were on Macs, while 3.15% of visitors used Safari.

Trends to watch in the near future:

• New browser releases (Firefox 3.1, Safari 4.0) and their effect on browser distribution
• Uptake of MSIE 8.0 once it is released via Windows Update
• Browser distribution is Asia

Steve Gillmor comments on TechCrunch today that Comcast’s caps on bandwidth may finally drive people from the land of torrents, and to the land of streaming. [here]

While I agree that the promise of streaming is long overdue, there is the one area that streaming still can’t fill: The mobile viewer. I don’t mean folks on mobile phones, although with the growth of 3G in the Americas (Europe and Asia laugh at us in the area), the mobile market will become more important.

No, I am referring to the mobile, laptop-using traveller, mainly the business traveller, although leisure travellers are starting to take their laptops with them more often. Streaming doesn’t work on the road, in a hotel with a crappy connection, in an airport, or somewhere were the 3G isn’t 3G enough.

While streaming will become more prevalent, it won’t unseat the culture of Torrents for a few years yet. It will happen. But affordable, reliable connectivity saturation across the Americas has to occur first. And, in some ways, Comcast and the other providers are the ones hampering this process.

The focus of the connectivity providers on their dinosaur cage-match with the FCC has left them ignorant of the asteroid screaming toward them. In order to create a streaming market that they can profit from, they have to open the pipes, lower the costs, and increase the options for the consumer of their Internet/bandwidth services. If the connectivity they provide to the consumers can’t support the desire for the streaming economy, the Torrent reality will not fade away.

I have set up measurements to monitor the main pages of some of the world’s largest mobile phone providers.

• US Providers
• Canadian Providers
• European Providers
• AsiaPac / South Asia Providers

Just something to do on a rainy Sunday.

Tags: GrabPERF, Web performance, GSM, CDMA, Web site, mobile, wireless, US, Asia, Europe

Many thanks to Otis Gospodnetic of Simpy for putting me in contact with Benjamin Reitzammer. Benjamin has graciously set up the GrabPERF measurement script on his server in Zurich.

Now that the Europeans have a growing presence on the GrabPERF Network, we need some locations in the US and Asia-Pacific.

Tags: GrabPERF, Simpy, Benjamin Reitzammer, measurement agent, Web performance, Zurich, Asia-Pacific, USA

My side project, GrabPERF, is looking for a few good measurement locations.

Right now, there are only five measurement locations, two of which are in my basement, on my personal Internet connection. I am hoping, through this pledge drive, to find a number of additional locations. Areas desperately needed include:

• East Coast, USA
• West Coast, USA
• Midwest, USA
• UK
• Asia-Pac
• Southeast Asia
• Australia / New Zealand

Yeah, I know. I am asking for the world. Can’t hurt to try though.

Basic requirements are a Linux box with a static IP address. Additional requirements are documented here.

You can express your interest in hosting a measurement site by filling in the GrabPERF Contact Form or contacting me directly.

Thank you for your continuing support.

Tags: GrabPERF, measurement locations, Web performance

Samantha says this one is the best one so far.

What do you think?

Ok Skype hounds, this is is. Skype, in a move to get us North Americans (sorry Mexico) to use more Skype, is offering us unlimited calling to Canadian and American numbers (landlines and mobile) for all of 2007 for the ridiculously low price of $14.95 (offer valid until January 31, 2007).

Get it! Like you need a reason to resist Skype?

Oh, and of course all Skype-to-Skype calls are still free.

So, the question begs to be asked: why? Well, it seems that us dense folks on the non-European side of the Atlantic and the non-Asian side of the Pacific haven’t been adopting Skype fast enough.

A variety of theories abound about this. The one I have is that the US phone companies have priced long-distance so low that there is no motivator driving people away from their POTS connections.

The competition between the Telcos and the Cablecos over your phone service has been another factor in keeping long-distance costs so low.

It will be interesting to see which of the long-distance companies responds with a North American unlimited plan for a ridiculously low rate.

Technorati Tags: Skype, SkypeOut, unlimited+calling, voip, Telcos, Cablecos, long+distance, competition

Canadian soldier killed, others wounded in ‘friendly fire’

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S. warplanes mistakenly strafed Canadian troops fighting Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, killing one soldier and seriously wounding five on Monday in an operation that NATO claims has also left 200 insurgents dead.

This is not the first “friendly-fire” incident involving US pilots and Canadian Ground troops.

On April 18, 2002, four Canadian soldiers were killed in what became known as the Afghanistan friendly fire incident: Sgt. Marc Léger, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer, Pte. Richard Green and Pte. Nathan Smith. Eight other soldiers were wounded during a night-time live-fire training exercise near Kandahar and Tarnak Farms. The four were killed when an American F-16 fighter pilot, unaware of the exercise, noticed the ground fire and responded by dropping a bomb without determining who the combatants were. These were the first Canadian soldiers to be killed in combat since the Korean War. The pilot, U.S. Air Force Maj. Harry Schmidt, disobeyed an air controller’s order to “standby” while information was verified. Schmidt was initially charged by the U.S. Air Force with 4 counts of involuntary manslaughter and 8 counts of assault. The charges were dropped in June 2003 and in July 2004 he was found guilty of dereliction of duty. [here]

UPDATE: Seems that the Canadian soldier killed on Monday was a track star at Nebraska.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Mark Graham, a former Nebraska track star, died Monday in Afghanistan while serving with the Canadian military. He was 33. [here]

Technorati Tags: Friendly+fire, US+pilots, Afghanistan, Canadian+soldiers

Dear Flickr:

I have been wondering for sometime why downloads from your site seemed a little sluggish at times.

At first I blamed your unprecedented growth and success. For a little Vancouver startup (I am a BC boy myself), your entrance onto the stage of social networking applications has been phenomenal. The move from zero to infinity may have played a part in the performance I was seeing.

Nope. There was something else going on; I could see it every time I loaded a Flickr page in my browser. There was something else going on.

So today, I checked something out, and found the problem.

You need to enable persistent TCP connection on the static.flickr.com servers.

Now, that is the simple answer. I know that with large, web-based applications, enabling something as monumental as persistent connections could cause serious issues. If the architecture of the system was not designed to handle persistent connections, turning them on could cause the entire system to collapse.

There are legitimate, if mis-guided, reasons for disabled persistent connections. Some administrators believe that it is actually more efficient to have a client open a connection for every object. Easier to manage state, etc. The only problem is that in order to do that, you have to tune the systems serving data to shorten the amount of time a closed connection spends in a TIME_WAIT state.

When a TCP connection is closed, the socket is not immediately closed by the system in a default configuration. The TIME_WAIT state is the holding pen that these connections are pushed into. While in this state, the socket is locked and this may count against the incoming TCP connection queue, forcing the network stack to delay or reset new incoming connections.

Still, as Flickr is a worldwide company, the delay that the lack of persistent connections injects is astounding for locations in Asia. If you want to grow your business, and support more services, this will likely become a bottleneck very quickly.

Have a great weekend!

smp

Technorati Tags: Flickr, persistent connections, TCP, http, web performance, scalability

Today, a new measurement location was added to the GrabPERF family. The team at Blog.com have graciously provided us with a server in Germany, and that is now online as Germany Blog.com #1.

We are still looking for measurement locations in the UK (or Ireland) and Asia.

Technorati Tags: GrabPERF, Blog.com, Germany, measurement, Web performance