Study Finds 100 Million Internet Hosts

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January 10, 2001 (6:02 PM EST)

By John Rendleman,

The number of hosts on the Internet worldwide has topped the 100 million mark, according to research by Telcordia Technologies Inc.

Assessing the number of Internet hosts, which include Internet-attached devices such as routers, Web servers, mail servers, workstations, and ports in the modem banks of Internet service providers, is perhaps the most accurate way to measure the size of the global Internet, Telcordia researchers say.

According to the company, the 100 million host mark is a 45 percent increase from a year ago. The researchers estimate that there are more than 350 million Internet users worldwide, or an average of about 3.4 users per host.

The ratio of users to hosts in the United States is 2.4 to 1, Telcordia found. Some countries, including China and India, have as many as 100 Internet users per host.

Telcordia derived its estimates of global Internet hosts using its Internet Sizer measurement tool. The tool takes a daily random sample of 150,000 Internet addresses and then checks to see how many of those addresses are in use on Internet domain name servers. The number of addresses already taken is then used to extrapolate how many hosts there are worldwide.

Reports provided by Internet Sizer during the last five years show that "in the United States, [Internet usage] is getting close to full penetration," says Tom Spacek, executive director of Internet and global information infrastructure initiatives at Telcordia.

As a result, the growth in the number of U.S. hosts has begun to taper off, Spacek says, although it continues to grow at a more rapid rate than in most other countries, where Internet penetration is much lower.