How big is the Internet? - about the size of a tastey strawberry

Wed Aug 14 17:14:34 UTC 2013

On 14 August 2013 10:06, <bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 10:32:13AM -0400, Sean Donelan wrote:
> >
> > Researchers have complained for years about the lack of good
> > statistics about the internet for a couple fo decades, since the
> > end of NSFNET statistics.
> >
> > What are the current estimates about the size of the Internet, all IP
> > networks including managed IP and private IP, and all telecommunications
> > including analog voice, video, sensor data, etc?
> >
> > CAIDA, ITU, Telegeography and some vendors like Cisco have released
> > forecasts and estimates.  There are occasional pieces of information
> > stated by companies in their investor documents (SEC 10-K, etc).
> >
>
>         thats easy...   the number of allocated IPv4 /32s and the
>         number of allocated IPv6 /64s.  By definition, private
>         networks (RFC 1918) space is not part of the Internet.
>
>         Or, is your question actually the absolute number of globally
>         reachable IP addresses at any given instant?  (reachable from
> where?)
>
>         Or do you mean anything that might have an IP address associated
> with
>         it at some time in its existance?
>
>         Clarity would be helpful if you want a repeatable answer.
>
> /bill
>
>
>
Or is size volume based, ie number of bits, and if so is it provisioned
capacity or average usage of that capacity?  Or even real devices vs used
IPs as there isn't a 1:1 mapping...

.r'