If statistics are to be believed, the amazing growth rate of the Internet is still blazing along, more than 10 years after the Web began to emerge beyond the Internet.
According to data published this week by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), as of January 2005 there were 317.6 million Internet hosts with an assigned name, a yearly increase of 36.3
percent.
The ISC’s January 2005 host count is similar to the growth rate between 2003 and 2004, which clocked in at 35.8 percent.
Between 2002 and 2003, host names only grew at a 16.5
percent growth rate while between 2000 and 2001 they grew by 51.3 percent.
The ISC’s semi-annual Internet Domain Survey has been
actively tracking the growth of host names since 1987. The ISC survey counts the number of IP addresses that have been assigned a name.
In addition to ISC’s stats, the March Netcraft Web Domain Survey released this week counted 60.4 million Web servers (via http). It was just
last May that Netcraft’s survey broke through the 50 million web server mark. This month’s survey is the 25th consecutive month of web site growth tracked by Netcraft.
As for the vastly different numbers from ISC regarding Web hosts (318 million) compared to Netcraft’s numbers on Web servers (60.4 million), ISC officials have explained in the past that the surveys are measuring different, yet similar things. The Netcraft survey counts Web servers, and the ISC survey counts hosts, ISC explained.
According to Netcraft, the open source Apache Web Server is also continuing to take share from rival Microsoft IIS servers. In the first months of 2005, Apache has already increased its market adoption rate over Microsoft by 2 percent.