How much Internet is Left?
Added October 2010
A while back, Patrick Davison and I were talking about how to statistically measure the size of the internet. Specifically, we are at WEC IV in Boston at the end of May 2010. I loved this idea, and started working out how one would be able to determine the size of the internet with him; he had already come up with a rough algorithm, which I coded up and put on a website. The algorithm runs every Monday, so over the next few years or so, we will certainly have data accurate enough to show exactly the amount of internet that has been purchased, and how that changes over time (as some TLD’s are created/maximized, and others fall out of favor (certainly, a lot of .me’s expired one year after their purchase…)). The algorithm is as such:
Given a TLD (COM, NET, ORG, etc…), ping a URL of three characters long, according to the URL specifications, where these characters are chosen at random. Continue pinging URLs to see if they resolve to websites. When one URL actually does resolve to a website, take note of the number of attempts. The value 1/Attempts is representative of the rough purchase of this space. Then, increase the number of characters in the URL by one, and conduct the same algorithm. Do this multiple times for each TLD, then record the average number of hits that are required for success.
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