Domain Survey Notes, July 1996

• The net continues to double in size approximately every 12-15 months.
• There is no way to determine how many users are on the net, besides making guesses and estimates.
• Note there is not necesarily any correlation between a hosts domain name and where it is actually located. A host with a .NL domain name could easily be located in the U.S. or any other country. In addition, hosts under domains EDU/ORG/NET/COM/INT could be located anywhere. There is no way to determine where a host is without asking its administrator.
• There is not necessarily any correlation between a network number and a domain name. A single network number could span many countries, and a single domain may have hosts on multiple network numbers.
• A host used to be a single machine on the net. However, the definitions of a host has changed in recent years due to virtual hosting, where a single machine acts like multiple systems (and has multiple domain names and IP addresses). Ideally, a virtual host will act and look exactly like a regular host, so we count them equally.
• We consider the numbers presented in the domain survey to be fairly good estimates of the minimum size of the Internet. We can not tell if there are hosts or domains we could not locate.
• In summary, it is not possible to determine the exact size of the Internet, where hosts are located, or how many users there are.