'Internet Census' Data Revealed
Photo Credit: USC
Researchers at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, one of the birthplaces of the Internet, recently completed a census of the more than 2.8 million allocated addresses on the Internet.
Theirs is the first complete effort of its kind in more than two decades, according to a press release. It took some 62 days to send almost 3 billion Internet "pings" from three machines. A detailed account of John Heidemannn and Yuri Pradkin's research can be found here.
About 60 percent of the pings received no response at all and many others got a "do not disturb" or "no information available" response that many network administrators program into their routers and firewalls. Some non-replies were probably also due to firewalls intentionally blocking the pings, officials said.
The researchers produced a complex color-coded map, providing "a novel census view of the visible Internet." The only other Web census was conducted in 1982 when the Internet consisted of 315 allocated addresses, Heidemannn said.
The census can help illustrate the need to move forward with the next-generation Internet, known as IPv6, he said. Some experts predict that Web addresses in the current system could all be allocated as soon as 2010. The work could also improve Web security, he added.
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