FAQ: RIPE Region Hostcount

For the purposes of Hostcount, a host is a domain name, such as a-host.a-com.de., sited at a leaf node of the domain name tree. In practice, all A records in the Domain Name System (DNS) are eligible to be counted as hosts, but many are discarded, for instance

A real host is a non-duplicate host. The number of real hosts for a particular TLD is equal to the counted hosts minus the number of duplicate hosts. Duplicate hosts are those hosts that have already counted during the Hostcount.

The zone transfer is an integral part of performing the RIPE NCC Region Hostcount. It is performed once at the end of each month for the purpose of generating summary statistics about the growth of the Internet.The RIPE NCC apologises for any concern that may have been caused by an unexpected attemp

The Internet Software Consortium carries out a survey of the entire Internet approximately every six months.

The RIPE NCC Hostcount is a Domain Name System (DNS) hostcount.The following TLDs are historical and their hosts and zones should not increase dramatically:gb - Great Britain - now covered by uksu - Soviet Union - now covered by multiple TLDs

The Hostcount collects its data via zone transfers. Many organisations are increasingly wary of allowing zone transfers of their domain for security reasons. It's also possible that some organsations wish to restrict zone transfers due to the increased load on their nam