The Hanoitimes - Vietnam has been listed among the top 20 countries in the world in terms of number of Internet users, with 24.3 million people surfing the Net, a survey by the Sweden-based website and server supervisor Pingdom has found.

The survey said though the world’s population exceeds six billion, o­nly 1.8 billion have Internet access and o­nly 32 countries have over 10 million users.

The top 20 countries account for 82 percent of the world’s Internet users.

China tops the world both in terms of population and users and has almost twice the number of users as the second-ranked country, the US. China has 420 million users to the US’ 234 million.

India ranks second in population and fourth in number of Internet users, though o­nly 6.9 percent of its population uses the Net.

Africa has just o­ne representative in the top 20 – Nigeria, which ranks tenth. Asia has six representatives, including Vietnam at 20th, which account for 35 percent of the world’s users.

The penetration rate is highest in developed countries like the UK (82.5 percent of population have access to the Internet), South Korea (81 percent), Germany (79 percent), Japan (78 percent), and the US (76 percent).

Though English is the most used language o­n the Internet, there are o­nly three English-speaking countries in the list: the US, the UK, and Canada.