The Internet Index

[format stolen from "Harper's Index"]

Compiled by Win Treese (treese@crl.dec.com), 7/8/93

Revised: 12/16/93

• Annual rate of growth for Gopher traffic: 997%
• Annual rate of growth for World-Wide Web traffic: 341,634%
• Average time between new networks connecting to the Internet: 10 minutes
• Number of newspaper and magazine articles about the Internet during the first nine months of 1993: over 2300
• Number of on-line coffeehouses in San Francisco: 18
• Cost for four minutes of Internet time at those coffeehouses: $0.25
• Date of first known Internet mail message sent by a head of state: 2 March 1993 (Sent by Bill Clinton, President of the United States)
• Date on which first Stephen King short story published via the Internet before print publication: 19 Sept 1993
• Number of mail messages carried by IBM's Internet gateways in January, 1993: about 340,000
• Number of mail messages carried by Digital's Internet gateways in June, 1993: over 700,000
• Advertised network numbers in July, 1993: 13,293
• Advertised network numbers in July, 1992: 5,739
• Date after which more than half the registered networks were commercial: August, 1991
• Number of Internet hosts in Norway, per 1000 population: 5
• Number of Internet hosts in United States, per 1000 population: 4
• Number of Internet hosts in July, 1993: 1,776,000
• Round-trip time from Digital CRL to mcmvax.mcmurdo.gov in McMurdo, Antartica:
  • 640 milliseconds
  • Number of hops: 18
• Number of USENET articles posted on a typical day in February, 1993: 35,000
  • Number of megabytes posted: 44
  • Number of users posting: 80,000
  • Number of sites represented: 25,000
• Number of Silicon Valley real estate agencies advertising with Internet mail addresses: 1
• Terabytes carried by the NSFnet backbone in February, 1993: 5
• Number of countries reachable by electronic mail: 137 (approx.)
• Number of countries not reachable by electronic mail: 99 (approx.)
• Number of countries on the Internet: 60
• Amount of time it takes for Supreme Court decisions to become available on the Internet: less than one day.
• Date of first National Public Radio program broadcast simultaneously on the Internet: 21 May 1993
• Percent of Boardwatch Top 100 BBS systems with Internet Connectivity: 21
• Number of people on the Internet who know you're a dog: 0