A proposal about hostcount and DNS

>     The current hostcount methods builds it's counting on the DNS A
>     records but nowdays is there a lot of machines which is not being
>     registred in DNS while they can make use of the Internet resources.
>     Example of such machines may be machines behind firewalls, private
>     addresses (193.168/16 and 10/8) or dial-in machines. These machines
>     will not be found in the DNS and therefore will not be counted.

My appologies if I am repeating anything said previously, however,
it is important to distinguish between "hosts" and "machines". We
must then decide which of the two we are trying to count.  In the 
case of machines, this becomes difficult as it is sometimes almost 
impossible to tell whether two addresses reside on the same machine.

In the days before HTTP1.1 and virtual interfaces, it would be easier
to count the number of physical nodes on the Internet, however, advancement
of protocols and operating systems has made this difficult.

As for private machines, running through a proxy, do we count these
as Internet hosts, since they are not directly connected to the Internet
and merely request proxies to contact internet services and relay
information.

When we start talking dialup machines, it becomes more obvious that
the count should try and focus on physical nodes.  If an ISP has
2,000 customers and 30 modems, only 30 hosts will ever be using
the internet at any one time, and only 30 IP addresses are being
used to accomodate all 2,000 people.  Therefore I would suggest
that the ISP has 30 nodes.

Regards
Craig

Craig R. Belcham - Domain Naming Manager.      
Mailbox Internet Ltd (http://www.mailbox.co.uk)
Email: crb at UK.COM - Telephone: 0171 731 8558   
                                               
Personal: me at crb.net    http://www.crb.net