Re: RIPE DNS Hostcount May 1993

[Marten Terpstra <Marten.Terpstra@localhost]

poole@localhost (Simon Poole) writes
 * > 
 * > - in total an increase of just over 19,000 to just over 385,000.
 * > 
 * > - History again appended
 * > 
 * > - output can be found ion ftp.ripe.net:ripe/hostcount
 * > 
 * 
 * Marten, 
 * 
 * 	I think it would be a good idea to supply reachability information
 * with these stats. ping'ing the addresses is a fairly good reality check 
 * (for example in Switzerland only about a third of the "hosts" are actually 
 * reachable according to the US domain survey).
 * 
 * Additionally, it would be a good idea to include a short statement 
 * as to what the numbers actually mean, and a disclaimer. Background:
 * more and more these numbers are used in PR, it is very well imaginable
 * that there might be legal trouble at one point in time.

OK Simon, here's the results of pinging every single host in CH:

28484 hosts were pinged (a bit different than the hostcount figures, but that
is because I massaged the data a bit):

Mon Jun  7 19:42:04 MET DST 1993
Summary:  28484 hosts pinged
           9155 reachable   (32.1 %)
          19329 unreachable (67.9 %)
Fri Jun 11 17:12:19 MET DST 1993

This took 4 days, but that was because an error in the ping timeouts I used.
This was one ping each, 15 seconds timeout. Reducing the timeout to two
seconds, and doing 10 pings in parallel, would mean something like 1.5 hours
for CH, and something like 24 hours for all countries maximum, assuming that
the 2 seconds time out would be enough.

-Marten