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n-1-3-040.31.4a
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N-1-3-040.31.4, "Current Sizes of Major Global Networks", by
John S. Quarterman, <jsq@tic.com>
Note to the editor: *indicates italics*
The *Matrix* is all the computer networks worldwide that exchange
electronic mail or news. How many computers is that? No one knows
for sure, but we can make a rough estimate by adding up the numbers of
hosts on the biggest global networks. Numbers are available for
BITNET, FidoNet, UUCP, the Internet, and USENET, for the end of July
1992. There are thousands of networks in the Matrix; these are not
all of them. But these are the biggest networks in the Matrix, and
the ones that probably contain most of the hosts.
Numbers of Hosts on Some
Global Networks in the Matrix
network hosts
_____________________________
USENET 55,000
_____________________________
BITNET 3,477
FidoNet 16,303
UUCP 14,805
The Internet 992,000
Enterprise IP 600,000
_____________________________
Total 1,612,000
July 1992
Figures compiled by Matrix, Inc., Austin, Texas.
+1-512-329-1087
mids@tic.com
BITNET, the IBM punchcard image leased line network that supports
mail, chat, file sending, and a sophisticated mailing list mechanism,
originally connected only IBM mainframes, but now includes many kinds
of systems, especially VMS. It has a nodelist called BITEARN NODES,
which lists 3,477 BITNET hosts.
FidoNet, the dialup personal computer (mostly MS-DOS) network that
provides mail and echomail (similar to USENET news), is defined by its
nodelist, which lists every node on the network. There are currently
16,303 hosts in the FidoNet nodelist.
UUCP, the dialup mail network that was originally all UNIX, but now
has many MS-DOS and other hosts, has a node list called the UUCP map.
Many UUCP hosts are not registered in the UUCP map, but it is safe to
assume 50% to 75% of them are. There are 14,805 hosts registered in
the UUCP map.
The Internet, the network of more than 5,000 constituent networks that
supports mail, news, remote login, file transfer, and numerous other
services, has no central registry. However, it is possible to
estimate its size by walking the DNS domain tree, and Mark Lottor of
SRI has been doing this periodically for years (see RFC 1296,
"Internet Growth (1981-1991)"). His latest results, for July 1992,
show 992,000 hosts with IP addresses.
Many companies have private internal enterprise networks that use IP
but are deliberately firewalled from the Internet so that no one can
connect in with services such as Telnet or FTP to most parts of them.
The SRI results exclude most such IP enterprise networks, although
they do include 96,963 hosts under hp.com, or, presumably, all of the
HP Internet. The SRI figures do not include much of most other large
IP enterprise networks, however. From adding up known sizes for
several of the largest such networks, and guessing at the number of
others, a conservative estimate would be about 600,000 hosts on such
IP enterprise networks.
USENET, the news-only virtual network, is carried on top of all of the
other networks already mentioned. Brian Reid of Digital has been
estimating its size for years, and his latest estimate shows 55,000
hosts. These machines are presumably almost all already counted among
the other networks, though, so we have to discard the USENET figure.
Adding up these estimates for the various networks, we get more than a
million and a half hosts in the Matrix, as shown in the table. For
further information, see *Matrix News*, volume 2, numbers 2 and 7,
which also include estimates of the numbers of users on the networks.