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@UK.COM - Telephone: 0171 731 8558 Personal: me@crb.net http://www.crb.net