[FYI] New Global Internet Statistics - Strategic Note
Terry Kuny
Terry.Kuny at xist.com
Wed Aug 27 11:43:15 EDT 1997
================================================================
Biannual Strategic Note 26 Aug 1997
INTERNET SURVEY REACHES 19.5 MILLION INTERNET HOST LEVEL
GROWTH TREND NOW APPEARS LINEAR
--Herndon VA, USA. The latest results from the Internet's most
basic and longest continuing measurement of it's size were just
released by Mark Lottor of Network Wizards at Menlo Park CA USA.
The Domain Survey attempts to discover every host on the Internet
by doing a complete search of the Domain Name System. The results
were gathered during July 1997. The raw data plus some Network
Wizards charts are available at <ftp://ftp.nw.com/zone> or
<http://www.nw.com/>. The latter also provides important
reachability information for each top level domain.
Lottor's measurements show that the Internet currently consists
of countless autonomous networks, representing 1,301,000 domains,
with 19,540,000 "advertised" connected computers in 214 countries
and territories. Because of the unknown and potentially unlimited
numbers of multiuser computers and network or application gateways,
it is not possible to correlate any of this information with the
number of end users. However, see Quarterman's estimates at
<http://www.mids.org>
Further processing and analyzing Lottor's data over the past
several years reveals the following newsworthy and strategic
highlights:
o The figure of 19.5 million hosts represents a current annual
host growth rate of 52 percent. On the basis of this latest
number, in analyzing the growth curve over the past seven
years, it now appears that the Internet host growth metric
has made a significant transition from exponential to linear.
An almost perfect least-squares-fit analysis shows that since
the Jan 1996 count, the host growth rate has been linear at
18,339 hosts per day.
o On the other hand, the proliferation of WWW servers - as
measured by WWW prefixed hosts, appears to manifest
continuing exponential growth - increasing by 256 percent
annually to a new high of 755,000 hosts.
o The growth rate transition is probably due to fundamental
shifts in the architecture of the Internet, its applications
(especially the WWW), and usage patterns. This would include
the increasing tendency of hiding large numbers of hosts
behind firewalls, outsourcing, and shared use of common hosts.
It also includes possible disincentives arising from second
order factors like sufficient very large numbers of people
who can maintain hosts, as well as the attractiveness of
pooling resources at common sites for bandwidth sharing and
other considerations. As the Internet scaled through its
seventh order of magnitude, it was apparent that the growth
could not remain exponential indefinitely.
o The largest single domain is .com with 4.50 million hosts,
and now constitutes 23 percent of all hosts. This relative
percentage is down another two percent over the past six months -
meaning there is a continuing growing preference for country
domain use being demonstrated worldwide.
o Among country and global top level domains above the 10,000
mark, the most rapidly growing included: Malaysia, Turkey
Russia, Korea, Russian Fed., Ukraine, China, Indonesia,
Argentina, Hong Kong, Thailand, and New Zealand.
o In absolute numbers, the most rapidly growing domains were
.net, .com, .edu, .US, Japan, Australia, Germany, .org, and
.UK with six month increases in excess of 100,000 hosts.
(See below.) Among the major countries outside the USA,
the host growth rate in Japan is consistently the largest.
o Without subsequent processing to attribute the three
letter global domains to a country previously done by
John Quarterman of MIDS <http://www.mids.org/>, it's
not possible to determine final country figures. However,
it appears approximately that the same 60% - 40% balance
between USA versus non-USA, proportions remain. Quarterman
should be contacted regarding the availability of this
information.
o Hosts in 214 country domains appear to have connectivity.
The domains of a record 27 countries or territories appeared
on the host count for the first time - apparently connecting
since Jan 97. (See below) Increasingly, some very remote
places are achieving connectivity. However, it is possible
some of these hosts may not be actually physically located
in the country.
Very attractive new graphic presentations of all these values
and trends can be found at several locations including:
<ftp://ftp.genmagic.com/pub/internet/trends-v97ppt.zip> PowerPoint 97
<ftp://ftp.genmagic.com/pub/internet/trends-v95ppt.zip> PowerPoint 95
<ftp://ftp.genmagic.com/pub/internet/trends-v4ppt.zip> PowerPoint v4
<ftp://ftp.genmagic.com/pub/internet/html.zip> HTML
*******************************************************************
* This analysis and material is made available to the Internet *
* community. The material may be copied and distributed providing *
* attribution is given to the sources. *
*******************************************************************
Tony Rutkowski
Herndon VA 22071
USA
tel: +1.703.437.9236
fax: +1.703.471.0596
=================================================================
Fastest Growing Internet Domains in 1997
(in absolute numbers)
6 month
31-Jul-96 31-Jan-97 31-Jul-97 Increase
--------- --------- --------- --------
.net 1,232,902 1,548,575 2,164,815 616,240
.com 3,323,647 3,965,417 4,501,039 535,622
.edu 2,114,851 2,654,129 2,942,714 288,585
USA-dom 432,727 587,175 825,048 237,873
Japan 496,427 734,406 955,688 221,282
Australia 397,460 514,760 707,611 192,851
Germany 548,168 721,847 875,631 153,784
.org 327,148 313,204 434,654 121,450
UK 579,492 764,000 878,215 114,215
Canada 424,356 603,325 690,316 86,991
Netherlands 214,704 270,521 341,560 71,039
Korea 47,973 66,262 132,370 66,108
Italy 113,776 149,595 211,966 62,371
Sweden 186,312 232,955 284,478 51,523
France 189,786 245,501 292,096 46,595
New Zealand 77,886 113,900 155,678 41,778
Norway 120,780 171,686 209,034 37,348
Russian Fed. (RU) 32,022 50,097 81,104 31,007
Denmark 76,955 106,476 137,008 30,532
Belgium 43,311 64,607 86,117 21,510
Russia 13,601 19,094 38,363 19,269
Switzerland 102,691 129,114 148,028 18,914
South Africa 83,349 99,284 117,475 18,191
Poland 38,432 54,455 70,500 16,045
Malaysia 8,541 25,200 40,533 15,333
Spain 62,447 110,041 121,823 11,782
Singapore 38,376 49,700 60,674 10,974
N.B. - these counts are country or global (e.g., .com)
top level DOMAINS. Total COUNTRY counts consist of the
country domain counts PLUS any .com, .net, .org, .mil
or .int global top level domains that may also be located
in the country. In the past, about 80% of these top level
domains have been in the USA. Consult Quarterman for
complete country totals.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Fastest Growing Internet Domains in 1996-97
(in relative annualized percentages)
Annual
31-Jul-96 31-Jan-97 31-Jul-97 Increase
--------- --------- --------- -------
Papua New Guinea 1 79 15600%
Tonga 3 7 417 13800%
Cote d'Ivoire 4 202 248 6100%
Qatar 6 21 365 5983%
Burkina Faso 1 1 48 4700%
Ghana 6 203 275 4483%
Netherlands Antilles 2 46 84 4100%
Tanzania 3 62 3933%
Guadeloupe 7 127 3429%
Lesotho 1 16 3000%
Mali 1 15 29 2800%
Guyana 3 52 57 1800%
Botswana 24 238 1783%
Angola 1 2 18 1700%
Niger 2 5 34 1600%
Moldova 10 97 168 1580%
Cuba 4 15 67 1575%
Burundi 1 8 1400%
Zaire 1 8 1400%
Saint Kitts and Nevis 2 12 1000%
Congo 1 6 1000%
French Polynesia 25 147 976%
Honduras 86 408 590 586%
Trinidad and Tobago 66 141 423 541%
Zimbabwe 45 176 272 504%
Senegal 46 69 275 498%
Guatemala 159 274 882 455%
Isle of Man 6 19 433%
Swaziland 49 226 240 390%
Malaysia 8,541 25,200 40,533 375%
El Salvador 43 226 200 365%
Macedonia 94 284 429 356%
Azerbaijan 18 6 81 350%
Mauritius 47 122 211 349%
Belarus 103 255 451 338%
United Arab Emirates 469 1,802 1,994 325%
Guernsey 5 13 320%
Namibia 84 262 350 317%
Vanuatu 8 7 32 300%
Bahrain 236 841 896 280%
Saint Lucia 20 21 74 270%
Liechtenstein 134 213 479 257%
Bolivia 154 430 538 249%
Kenya 133 273 457 244%
Norfolk Island 73 160 238%
Vatican 3 5 10 233%
Virgin Islands (US) 11 18 35 218%
Armenia 105 175 332 216%
Lebanon 359 1,128 214%
New Caledonia 19 23 59 211%
Belize 8 12 24 200%
Greenland 140 215 417 198%
Turkey 7,743 13,194 22,963 197%
Peru 2,269 5,192 6,510 187%
Russia 13,601 19,094 38,363 182%
Paraguay 85 187 239 181%
Venezuela 1,679 2,417 4,679 179%
Zambia 92 173 255 177%
Korea 47,973 66,262 132,370 176%
Nepal 60 60 165 175%
Croatia 2,480 4,883 6,705 170%
San Marino 277 457 734 165%
Sri Lanka 234 349 611 161%
Nicaragua 285 531 743 161%
Monaco 99 219 258 161%
Russian Fed. (RU) 32,022 50,097 81,104 153%
Morocco 351 477 888 153%
Georgia 119 210 298 150%
Pakistan 386 511 959 148%
Bulgaria 2,254 3,653 5,515 145%
Ukraine 4,499 6,966 10,513 134%
Egypt 817 1,615 1,894 132%
Gibraltar 60 78 138 130%
Dominica 27 55 62 130%
China 11,282 19,739 25,594 127%
Barbados 9 21 20 122%
India 2,176 3,138 4,794 120%
Romania 2,725 8,205 5,998 120%
Jordan 79 140 170 115%
Cyprus 919 1,481 1,973 115%
Maldives 33 51 109%
Kazakhstan 545 807 1,136 108%
Lithuania 1,335 1,775 2,761 107%
Uzbekistan 74 122 153 107%
Indonesia 5,262 9,591 10,861 106%
Argentina 9,415 12,688 18,985 102%
Hong Kong 24,133 49,162 48,660 102%
Thailand 6,362 9,245 12,794 101%
Nigeria 4 6 100%
New Zealand 77,886 113,900 155,678 100%
---------------------------------------------------------------
Country or Territory Hosts First Appearing Jul 1997
American Samoa
Bhutan
Buinea-Bissau
Cambodia
Cameroon
Cape Verde
East Timor
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Grenada
Kyrgyzstan
Libya
Marshall Islands
Martinique
Montserrat
Myanmar
Niue
Palau
Pitcairn
Rwanda
Samoa
Seychelles
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Sudan
Turkmenistan
Turks and Caicos Islands
Virgin Islands (British)
More information about the Web4lib
mailing list