Internet Growth
In 1993 the number of internet users was a trivial percentage of the world population. Today there are over a billion users, nearly 17% of the world population[1], and some 440 million host computers on the internet [2].
Initially the rate of growth of users and hosts greatly exceeded the "Moore's Law" rate of doubling every 18 months (equivalent to 59% annual growth). Today the number of users is increasing about 13%/year and the number of hosts about 24%/year. Apparently more people are getting their own dedicated internet connections. The DNS (Domain Name System) lists all computers (hosts) connected to the internet. Presumably because many people use dialup connections with dnynamic IP, the ratio of users to hosts has varied from about 1.7 in 1995 to a peak of about 5.5 in 2001 and has been decreasing since then to about 2.4 today. Over time I should think the user and host growth rates will both approach the population growth rate. References: [1] Internet User Growth [2] Internet Host Growth
