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+Network Working Group                                          M. Lottor
+Request for Comments: 1296                             SRI International
+                                      Network Information Systems Center
+                                                            January 1992
+
+
+                      Internet Growth (1981-1991)
+
+Status of this Memo
+
+   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
+   not specify an Internet standard.  Distribution of this memo is
+   unlimited.
+
+Abstract
+
+   This document illustrates the growth of the Internet by examination
+   of entries in the Domain Name System (DNS) and pre-DNS host tables.
+   DNS entries are collected by a program called ZONE, which searches
+   the Internet and retrieves data from all known domains.  Pre-DNS host
+   table data were retrieved from system archive tapes.  Various
+   statistics are presented on the number of hosts and domains.
+
+Table of Contents
+
+   Introduction....................................................   1
+   How ZONE Works..................................................   2
+   Problems with Data Collection...................................   3
+   Scope of the Study..............................................   3
+   N. Results......................................................   4
+   N.1 Number of Internet Hosts....................................   4
+   N.2 Number of Domains...........................................   6
+   N.3 Distribution of IP Addresses per Host.......................   7
+   N.4 Distribution of Hosts by Top-level Domain...................   7
+   N.5 Distribution of Hosts by Host Name..........................   8
+   Future Issues...................................................   8
+   RFC References..................................................   9
+   Security Considerations.........................................   9
+   Author's Address................................................   9
+
+Introduction
+
+   This document provides statistics on the growth of the Internet by
+   examining the number of Internet hosts and domains over a 10-year
+   period.  Before the Domain Name System was established, practically
+   all hosts on the Internet were registered with the Network
+   Information Center (SRI-NIC) and entries were placed in the Official
+   Host Table for each one.  Data on the number of hosts for pre-DNS
+
+
+
+Lottor                                                          [Page 1]
+
+RFC 1296              Internet Growth (1981-1991)           January 1992
+
+
+   years comes from copies of the host table at selected times.  The DNS
+   system was introduced around 1984 but took almost 4 years before it
+   was fully implemented on the Internet.  However, by this time many
+   hosts were no longer registered in the Host Table.
+
+   In 1986, the ZONE (Zealot Of Name Edification) program was written.
+   ZONE was originally intended to be used during the host-table-to-DNS
+   transition period.  ZONE would "walk" the DNS tree and build a host
+   table of all the information it collected.  This host table could
+   then be used by sites that had not yet made the DNS transition.
+   However, ZONE was never used for this purpose.  Instead, it was found
+   to be useful for collecting statistics on the size of the domain
+   system and the Internet.
+
+   ZONE could not collect complete data on the DNS until around 1988,
+   because early versions of BIND (the popular Unix DNS implementation)
+   had major problems with the zone transfer function of the DNS
+   protocol.  ZONE has been used in varying ways ever since to collect
+   this information.  In the first few years, it was used to produce a
+   wall-size chart of the domain tree.  However, the number of domains
+   quickly outgrew the size of the wall and the charts were abandoned.
+   In later years, statistics on the number of hosts and domains were
+   extracted from the resulting host table, sometimes categorizing data
+   based on top-level domain names or on computer system type or
+   manufacturer.
+
+   The time to gather the data also grew from hours to a week, and the
+   size of the host table produced soon reached 50 megabytes.  In order
+   to reduce the amount of data collected, ZONE is now run in a mode
+   collecting only host names and IP addresses, ignoring protocol, host
+   information and MX record data.  The host table is then groveled over
+   by some utilities (such as sort, uniq and grep) to produce the
+   statistics required.  ZONE is currently run every 3 months at SRI.
+
+How ZONE Works
+
+   ZONE maintains a list of domains and their servers and a flag
+   indicating whether information for a domain has been successfully
+   loaded from one of the servers. Because of another bug in BIND, ZONE
+   must be primed with a list of all the top-level domains and their
+   name servers.  It then cycles through the domain list, attempting to
+   contact one of the servers for each domain not yet transferred.  When
+   a server is contacted (via TCP), a Start of Authority (SOA) query is
+   first sent to make sure the server is authoritative for the domain
+   being requested.  If so, then a zone transfer query (AXFR) is sent to
+   request all the resource records for the domain to be retrieved.
+
+   When a name server record (NS) is received, the referenced domain and
+
+
+
+Lottor                                                          [Page 2]
+
+RFC 1296              Internet Growth (1981-1991)           January 1992
+
+
+   server are added to the list of domains to process.  When host
+   records (A, CNAME, HINFO, MX) are received, they are added to an in-
+   core table of host information.  The program ends when it has cycled
+   through the entire list of domains without receiving any new
+   information.  It then dumps the table of host information to a
+   HOSTS.TXT format file.
+
+Problems with Data Collection
+
+   For various reasons, some Internet sites do not allow zone transfers
+   of their domain servers.  ZONE also eventually gives up trying to
+   transfer a domain after too many failures.  The number of domains
+   that could not be zone transferred during the 1-Jan-92 ZONE run was
+   around 800 out of 17,000.  Additionally, it is assumed that not all
+   hosts on the Internet are registered in a domain server.  These
+   problems cause the statistics gathered by ZONE to be lower than the
+   actual amounts.
+
+   Manual review of some of the data collected by ZONE also shows a lot
+   of random entries in the DNS.  Misformatted entries may cause bogus
+   server or host records to appear.  Many times a server is found to
+   not be authoritative for the domain listed.  Sometimes entire domains
+   are renamed and their old entries left in place for a transition
+   period, thus causing each host within that domain to be counted
+   twice.  These problems cause the results of ZONE to be higher than
+   the actual amounts.
+
+   Manual scanning of the data indicates that the additional entries are
+   insignificant compared to the missing entries discussed earlier.
+   ZONE data can thus be viewed as the minimum number of Internet hosts,
+   and not the actual figures.
+
+   A final problem with data collection is that of expense.  Downloading
+   domain information from every domain on the Internet generates a
+   large amount of network traffic.  It also puts an extra CPU load on
+   each domain server it must contact.  An organized effort might be
+   considered to have only one such program doing this on the Internet
+   at regularly scheduled intervals to keep the problem of multiple data
+   collectors from occurring.
+
+Scope of the Study
+
+   A problem with counting hosts and domains on the Internet is defining
+   what the Internet really is.  Finding host entries in the DNS does
+   not necessarily indicate that the host is reachable from the
+   Internet.  Many companies have mail gateways between the Internet and
+   their local nets, thus disallowing direct access.  However, some of
+   these companies advertise all their hosts, and some advertise only
+
+
+
+Lottor                                                          [Page 3]
+
+RFC 1296              Internet Growth (1981-1991)           January 1992
+
+
+   the gateway.  Are these hosts on the Internet or not?
+
+   Furthermore, many domains in the DNS are just mail-forwarding (MX)
+   entries for off-Internet (such as Usenet) sites.  Are these domains
+   really part of the Internet and should they be counted in an Internet
+   size study?
+
+   For the purposes of this study, a host has been defined as a
+   [name(s),IP-address(es)] grouping discovered from the DNS.  This
+   prevents us from counting a host with multiple names or addresses
+   more than once.  However, this does not consider whether the host is
+   directly accessible or not.  When ZONE counts the number of domains
+   it includes all domains referenced by an NS record in the DNS, thus
+   including MX-only domain sites in the final results.
+
+N. Results
+
+   This section presents data from archive tapes of SRI-NIC from 1981 to
+   1986, and statistics gathered by runs of ZONE from 1986 to 1992.
+
+N.1 Number of Internet Hosts
+
+   The chart below shows the number of IP hosts on the Internet.  These
+   are hosts with at least one IP address assigned.  Data was collected
+   by ZONE except where noted.  The following two sections are graphs of
+   the data in this chart.
+
+        Date             Hosts
+
+        08/81              213          Host table #152
+        05/82              235          Host table #166
+        08/83              562          Host table #300
+        10/84            1,024          Host table #392
+        10/85            1,961          Host table #485
+        02/86            2,308          Host table #515
+        11/86            5,089
+        12/87           28,174
+        07/88           33,000
+        10/88           56,000
+        01/89           80,000
+        07/89          130,000
+        10/89          159,000
+        10/90          313,000
+        01/91          376,000
+        07/91          535,000
+        10/91          617,000
+        01/92          727,000
+
+
+
+
+Lottor                                                          [Page 4]
+
+RFC 1296              Internet Growth (1981-1991)           January 1992
+
+
+                        Number of Internet Hosts (linear)
+800|
+780|
+760|
+740|                                                                  *
+720|
+700|
+680|                                                                 .
+660|
+640|
+620|
+600| T                                                              *
+580| h
+560| o
+540| u
+520| s                                                             *
+500| a
+480| n                                                            .
+460| d
+440| s
+420|                                                             .
+400| o
+380| f
+360|                                                            *
+340| H                                                         .
+320| o
+300| s                                                        *
+280| t
+260| s                                                       .
+240|                                                        .
+220|                                                       .
+200|                                                      .
+180|                                                     .
+160|
+140|                                                    *
+120|                                                   *
+100|                                                 ..
+ 80|                                                *
+ 60|                                               .
+ 40|                                              *
+ 20|                                       ..*...*
+  0|...*....*......*......*.....*.*....*...
+    -------------------------------------------------------------------
+    8     8     8     8     8     8     8     8     8     9     9     9
+    1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9     0     1     2
+                                   Date
+    "*"  = data point,  "." = estimate
+This graph is a linear plot of the number of Internet hosts.
+
+
+
+Lottor                                                          [Page 5]
+
+RFC 1296              Internet Growth (1981-1991)           January 1992
+
+
+                        Number of Internet Hosts (logarithmic)
+
+
+    | 1000000
+    |                                                                *.*
+    |                                                        ..*.*..*
+    |                                                     ...
+    | 100000                                          ..**
+    |                                              *.*
+  H |                                          ...*
+  o |                                        .*
+  s | 10000                                ..
+  t |                                    ..
+  s |                               ....*
+    |                         ...*.*
+1000|                   ...*..
+    |                ...
+    |            ...*
+    | ..*....*...
+ 100|.
+     -------------------------------------------------------------------
+     8     8     8     8     8     8     8     8     8     9     9     9
+     1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9     0     1     2
+                                    Date
+
+     "*"  = data point,  "." = estimate
+
+This graph is a logarithmic plot of the number of Internet hosts.
+
+N.2 Number of Domains
+
+   This chart shows the number of domains existing in the Internet
+   Domain Name System as collected by ZONE.
+
+        Date           Domains
+
+        07/88              900
+        10/88            1,280
+        01/89            2,600
+        07/89            3,900
+        10/89            4,800
+        10/90            9,300
+        01/91           11,200
+        07/91           16,000
+        10/91           18,000
+        01/92           17,000
+
+
+
+
+
+Lottor                                                          [Page 6]
+
+RFC 1296              Internet Growth (1981-1991)           January 1992
+
+
+N.3 Distribution of IP Addresses per Host
+
+   This chart shows how many hosts have how many IP addresses.  This
+   data was collected on 1-Jan-92 and only the first 10 entries are
+   shown.
+
+     Addresses           Hosts
+
+         1              715143
+         2                9015
+         3                1027
+         4                 556
+         5                 314
+         6                 213
+         7                 100
+         8                  85
+         9                  58
+        10                  71
+
+N.4 Distribution of Hosts by Top-level Domain
+
+   This chart shows the number of hosts per top-level domain (top 40
+   only) on 1-Jan-92.  The percentage listed is the increase since 1-
+   Oct-91.  Large variations are probably due to problems and variations
+   in the collection process; these figures are not meant to be
+   authoritative, but serve as reasonable estimates.
+
+   243020 edu 13%     13011 fr    4%     1791 dk   4%     357 be  -5%
+   181361 com 12%     12770 nl   21%     1662 es  15%     334 gr  14%
+    46463 gov 13%     12647 ch   10%     1506 kr   9%     308 br  26%
+    31622 au  19%     11994 fi   15%     1111 nz -16%     284 mx  -5%
+    31016 de  20%     10228 no    9%     1016 tw  n/a     207 is   0%
+    27492 mil 26%      8579 jp    6%      929 za  n/a     146 pl  97%
+    27052 ca  22%      4109 net -49%      784 pt  n/a     127 us  25%
+    19117 org 10%      3324 at   19%      484 sg 251%      25 tn   0%
+    18984 uk 139%      2719 it  197%      448 hk  78%      24 hu  71%
+    18473 se  34%      2020 il   14%      374 ie  -7%       6 arpa 0%
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Lottor                                                          [Page 7]
+
+RFC 1296              Internet Growth (1981-1991)           January 1992
+
+
+N.5 Distribution of Hosts by Host Name
+
+   This chart shows the distribution of hosts by their host name on 1-
+   Jan-92.  The host name is defined to be the first part of a fully
+   qualified domain name.  Only the top 100 names are shown.
+
+384 venus       204 mac4       172 mac9        155 pollux     138 chaos
+356 pluto       201 hobbes     172 mac11       155 frodo      136 bart
+323 mars        201 hermes     170 mac8        153 helios     135 pc5
+288 jupiter     198 thor       169 phoenix     152 mac17      135 larry
+286 saturn      198 sirius     169 mac12       151 vega       135 cs
+285 pc1         196 gw         169 hal         151 mac18      133 odin
+282 zeus        195 calvin     168 snoopy      150 falcon     131 tiger
+262 iris        194 mac5       168 mac13       150 bach       131 sparky
+260 mercury     191 mac10      167 mac15       146 castor     131 ariel
+259 mac1        190 fred       167 mac14       145 sol        130 sneezy
+258 orion       189 titan      167 grumpy      145 dopey      128 mac
+254 mac2        189 pc3        163 gandalf     144 mac20      127 sun1
+240 newton      186 opus       162 pc4         144 mac19      127 rocky
+234 neptune     186 mac6       160 uranus      142 spock      126 pc6
+233 pc2         185 charon     159 mac16       142 euler      125 hydra
+224 gauss       185 apollo     158 sleepy      141 mickey     125 homer
+222 eagle       179 mac7       158 io          141 atlas      124 isis
+213 mac3        179 athena     157 earth       140 maxwell    123 moe
+209 merlin      177 alpha      156 europa      140 happy      123 delta
+207 cisco       172 mozart     155 rigel       140 doc        122 pc10
+
+Future Issues
+
+   ZONE currently runs on a DECsystem-20 and is written in assembler.
+   The amount of data is quickly reaching the limits of the DEC-20
+   section address space, and the hardware's ability to survive gets
+   slimmer each day.  ZONE assembles all its data in core before dumping
+   it to disk.  The implementation does this in order to be able to
+   match host nicknames with official names before dumping complete host
+   records.  Sometimes a nickname can be in a different domain than the
+   official name, complicating simpler methods.
+
+   A new version of ZONE needs to be written to run on a modern computer
+   system.  A completely new architecture should be designed to handle
+   the enormous amount of data collected and expected in the future.
+   Data should be kept on disk so that a system crash will not wipe out
+   days of collection.  Multiple zone transfers could be occurring in
+   parallel to reduce the time needed for data gathering.  A new ZONE
+   might run continuously, cycling through the domain system on a cycle
+   lasting weeks to a month, updating a local database with statistics
+   collected for each domain.  In this way, current statistics on the
+   size of the Internet would always be known.  The resulting database
+
+
+
+Lottor                                                          [Page 8]
+
+RFC 1296              Internet Growth (1981-1991)           January 1992
+
+
+   may also be useful for other network information services.
+
+RFC References
+
+   Libes, D., "Choosing a Name for Your Computer", RFC 1178, Integrated
+   Systems Group/NIST, August 1990.  (Also FYI 5.)
+
+   Mockapetris, P., "Domain Names - Implementation and Specification",
+   RFC 1035, USC/Information Sciences Institute, November 1987.
+
+   Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - Concepts and Facilities", RFC 1034,
+   USC/Information Sciences Institute, November 1987.
+
+   Lazear, W., "MILNET Name Domain Transition", RFC 1031, Mitre,
+   November 1987.
+
+   Harrenstien, K. Stahl, M., and J. Feinler, "DoD Internet Host Table
+   Specification", SRI, October 1985.
+
+   Postel, J., "Domain Name System Implementation Schedule - Revised",
+   RFC 921, USC/Information Sciences Institute, October 1984.
+
+Security Considerations
+
+   Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
+
+Author's Address
+
+   Mark K. Lottor
+   SRI International
+   Network Information Systems Center
+   333 Ravenswood Avenue, EJ282
+   Menlo Park, CA  94025
+
+   EMail: mkl@nisc.sri.com
+
+
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+Lottor                                                          [Page 9]
+
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