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Why the Internet's unmitigated growth is cause for concern11/2/2006 4:50:00 PM By: Shane Schick
Given the options that are out there, I can only be grateful you’ve decided to visit this site.
Traffic monitoring company Netcraft this week said the Internet has surpassed a major milestone of 100 million portals scattered throughout cyberspace. It’ s a big number, and in many ways a useless number. Although it may say something about the power of the Web as a communications medium – and if this isn’t critical mass, I don’t know what is – it doesn’t give any obvious clues as to how we should manage the Internet’s future. Instead, it reminds me of those statistics trotted out by vendors of data management products, who will try to convey the capacity of their systems by asking us to imagine a pile of file folders taller than the CN Tower.
The more interesting detail is not the growth but the acceleration of the growth. According to Netcraft, it took until May of 2004 to go from 18,000 sites to the 50 million milestone; then only 30 more months to hit 100 million, late last month. The rise of Web 2.0 technologies and in particular the spread of social networking tools means the trend will probably continue, leaving open a great opportunity for someone to coin a Moore’s Law that accurately predicts Web site proliferation (any takers?).
One obvious implication of the 100 million mark is the issues around IP addressing space, and the need for more providers and sites to prepare themselves for the switch from IPv4 to IPv6. I know I’ve written about this before. I’m aware it must be getting annoying to hear me lecture the industry about it once a year. But I’ve become a champion for IPv6 and now there’s nothing to be done about it but point out that since it was first adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force in 1994, (when it was called "IP Next Generation") this is a protocol whose time has come. Adopt it before the number of IPv4 addresses run out, which is expected by the end of the decade but given the 100 million mark, may happen even faster.
Another takeaway from the Netcraft number is that growth does not necessarily equal relevance. It may be time to start fine-tuning our definition of what a Web site really is. With so many dead blogs, brochureware sites and other Web debris taking up space online, there should be a way of distinguishing the portals that actually perform transactions or activities that affect bandwidth performance. There may be 100 million Web sites, but how many places on the Web are really worth sticking around?
Even when there were only tens of thousands of Web sites, it was unlikely any one person would visit all of them, even if they dedicated a substantial portion of their lives to the project. Now it is certainly impossible to appreciate in full. Users should therefore make sure they make the best use possible of that little piece of the Internet we will each get to see.
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