Facts about Computer Networks

In the following you can find some facts about the internet. As mentioned in the “types” section, the internet is part of the wide area computer network (WAN).

• 1993: 4.6 million internet users in the U.S.
• 1995: 9.6 million internet users in the U.S.
• 1998: 19.1 million internet users in the U.S.
• 1999: 58 million to 92 million in US (depending on research source)
• 2000: 180 million users in the U.S. (as of December 2000), 2.1 billion online worldwide
• 2008: The internet has 1.5 billion users (around 500 million from Asia, 400 million from Europe, 250 million from North America)
• The number of internet users grew by 290% between 2000 and 2008
• The radio network had 50 million listeners after 38 years, the television network just needed 13 years to reach that number, and the internet had 50 million users after just 5 years
• In the average, each user spends 25 hours in the internet a month and each session lasts 51 minutes
• There are a total of 100 million domains registered (active)

The statistics are extracted from the internet world stats web site.