[1551] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Growth of the Internet ...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dennis Ferguson)
Mon Nov 4 16:52:43 1991
From: Dennis Ferguson <dennis@MrBill.CAnet.CA>
To: dotytr@nscultrix2.network.com
Cc: com-priv@uu.psi.com
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1991 15:03:32 -0000
Ted,
The problem which occurs when speculating on the size of the Internet
is that there is no real way to measure the things people are really
interested in (number of users, number of hosts, that kind of thing).
About all you can do is look at the size of things which you can measure
and hope they are proportionally related to the measurements you would
like to know.
I don't know what Hans-Werner based his estimate on, but I can gave
you an estimate based on the number of networks a default-free Internet
router will know about.
This number, in June of 1988, was just over 400 networks. In June of
1990 it was just over 1300, and now it is just under 3000. This is
a monthly increase of about 5%, both between 1988 and 1990 and between
1990 and now, so by this measure the growth of the Internet shows no
signs of slacking. It also suggests that routers which need to carry
a full set of Internet routes need to be prepared to carry 5000 networks
by September of next year, and 10000 networks by December of 1993,
interesting numbers if you have to design or operate such things.
This isn't the only measure one can use, I suspect traffic might
show a higher rate of increase if one could measure this sensibly.
There really isn't a single figure which one can measure which
accurately characterizes the size of the Internet. No matter which
of the particular things we can measure you use as an indicator, you'll
always have to do some arm waving to prove the number is more generally
meaningful.
Dennis Ferguson
