Internet Statistics

This is a collection of statistics relating to the Internet. All figures are either derived from published estimates, or backed up by published surveys. Last updated 5 February 1998.

Compiled by András Salamon <andras@is.co.za>. If you use information from this page, please quote http://www.dns.net/andras/stats.html as your source.

Contents

How many people use the Internet?
How many computers are connected?
What is the proportion of female users?
How many countries are connected?
How much time do people spend using the Internet?
What are typical email volumes?
How much USENET news is there daily?
What are the most popular hostnames?
What web server software is most popular?
How many people in South Africa are connected?
Which are the top 20 countries?
Where are some surveys?
Any other interesting references?

The world of Internet statistics

Estimated number of users of the Internet
101 million in January 1998 [Nua estimate, updated monthly]
Aged 16 and above, in USA and Canada only: 24 million in September 1995, 50.6 million in January 1997. [CommerceNet/Nielsen survey, January 1997]
38 million at the end of 1994 [IDC bulletin, April 1995]
Estimated number of Internet hosts [see the domain survey and a different approach]
in July 1993: 1,776,000
in July 1994: 3,212,000
in July 1995: 6,642,000
in January 1996: 9,472,000
in July 1996: 12,881,000
in January 1997: 16,146,000
in July 1997: 19,540,000
Host counts for the just the German DE top-level domain are available each month.
For a graphical representation, see Network Wizards graph or General Magic Internet trends.

It is generally believed that the ratio of users to hostnames is fairly constant, in the region of 5. The increasing prevalence of address-translating firewalls and shared IP address blocks for dialup IP has slowed hostname growth while allowing the number of users to continue growing. These factors on their own would have increased the user-to-hostname ratio. However, at the same time the ratio of multiuser servers to single user IP devices has shrunk. On its own, this would have decreased the user-to-hostname ratio. I believe these two phenomena largely cancel each other out, so the user-to-hostname ratio is likely to still be in the range of 4 to 6.

Estimates of proportion of female Internet users
42% female in January 1997, 34% female in September 1995 [CommerceNet/Nielsen survey, January 1997]
36% female [see the TIC/MIDS surveys, December 1994]
33% female [O'Reilly survey, October 1995]
31.5% female [see the GVU surveys, May 1996]
Countries IP connected to the Internet at 29 July 1996: 146, at 26 March 1997: 177, at 28 July 1997: 182
Countries reachable by electronic mail at 29 July 1996: 167, at 26 March 1997: 190, at 28 July 1997: 194
[see the country codes document and associated connectivity map]
Average usage per week per person in the US and Canada
35 minutes (equivalent to the time spent watching rented video tapes) [CommerceNet/Nielsen survey, September 1995]
Mail messages passing through
IBM's gateways in January 1993: 340,000
Digital's gateways in June 1993: over 700,000
The Internet Solution's main mail hub in February 1996: 460,000
USENET articles per day
February 1993: 35000 articles, 44 MB
January 1994: 48100 articles, 89 MB
August 1994: 71900 articles, 150 MB
March 1996: approximately 1GB
Top ten host names on the Internet, in July 1997 [see the naming guidelines]
  1. www
  2. mail
  3. ftp
  4. ns
  5. host
  6. ns2
  7. ns1
  8. router
  9. news
  10. smtp
Top five most popular web servers, estimated in August 1997 [from the Netcraft web server survey]
  1. Apache
  2. Microsoft-Internet-Information-Server
  3. NCSA
  4. Netscape-Enterprise
  5. Netscape-Commerce

South Africa on the Net

No reliable figures are available for the number of users in South Africa as at 7 September 1997. Estimates tend to vary from 350,000 to 800,000. Based on the domain survey, and assuming similar user-per-hostname ratios for South Africa as for the rest of the world (about 5 users per hostname), 420,000 South African users in July 1996 was in line with the the 65m estimated users worldwide at that time. A more conservative figure was 250,000, which I would regard as a lower bound.

In July 1997, the domain survey estimate yields 600,000 South African users.

Top 20 countries by domain names, July 1997 {July 1996} (January 1996) [see the domain survey]
  1. <1> {1} (1) USA
  2. <2> {4} (6) Japan
  3. <5> {2} (3) UK
  4. <3> {3} (2) Germany
  5. <6> {6} (5) Australia
  6. <4> {5} (4) Canada
  7. <8> {8} (8) Netherlands
  8. <7> {7} (7) Finland
  9. <9> {9} (10) France
  10. <10> {10} (9) Sweden
  11. <12> {12} (13) Italy
  12. <11> {11} (11) Norway
  13. <18> {15} (15) New Zealand
  14. <13> {13} (12) Switzerland
  15. <15> {16} (17) Denmark
  16. <20> {19} (21) Republic of Korea
  17. <14> {18} (14) Spain
  18. <16> {14} (18) South Africa
  19. <17> {17} (16) Austria
  20. <21> {21} (20) Belgium
Internet surveys
Nua's Internet Surveys
IRTF Survey Working Group
Domain survey
User Profiles by Geographic Region
GVU surveys
CommerceNet/Nielsen demographic survey (US/Canada only)
TIC/MIDS surveys
Netcraft web server survey
Other sources referred to in this document
IDC
General Magic Internet trends
CIA World Factbook
RFC 1178 on host name guidelines
Country codes document
Connectivity map
O'Reilly survey
DE hostcount
andras@is.co.za / The Internet Solution