1.1 Pervasiveness

``Pervasiveness" is a function of the number of users and hosts per capita. The elements of pervasiveness are listed below. The term ``users" must be qualified here, since it allows for a great degree of ambiguity. The intent is to represent as accurately as possible the number of people who are regular users of the Internet. Such numbers are not readily available. However, it is often possible to obtain or reasonably estimate the number of subscribers, that is, Internet account holders. The actual number of users is usually larger by factors that vary greatly from Internet service provider (ISP) to ISP, and within a country. There is no way to measure this number and such published estimates as exist are of questionable validity.

Different levels of pervasiveness are

• Level 0: Non-existent - The Internet does not exist in a viable form in this country. No computers with international IP connections are located within the country. There may be some Internet users in the country; however, they obtain a connection via an international telephone call to a foreign ISP.

• Level 1: Embryonic - The ratio of users per capita is on the order of magnitude of less than one in a thousand. The ratio of hosts per capita is less than 12 hosts per 10 million people.

• Level 2: Established - The ratio of Internet users per capita is on the order of magnitude of at least one in a thousand. There are fewer than 1,700 hosts per 10 million people.

• Level 3: Common - The ratio of Internet users per capita is on the order of magnitude of at least one in a hundred. The ratio of hosts per capita is between 1,700 and 70,000 hosts per 10 million people.

• Level 4: Pervasive - The Internet is pervasive. The ratio of Internet users per capita is on the order of magnitude of at least one in ten. There are more than 70,000 hosts per 10 million people (7 hosts per 1,000 people).

Data on the number of Internet hosts in Iran can be obtained from the RIPE Network Coordination Center. These are shown in Table 1.1 for first and second quarter of 1999 surveys. In this table

• ``SOA" is the number of delegated domains (zones) found below the .ir top level domain. In short this will be the number of subdomains below this top level domain that run a separate nameserver.

• ``Counted" is the number of hosts (machines) found under this top level domain. Hosts like ``loopback", ``localhost", etc are excluded from this number (in DNS terms, only A records are examined).

• ``Duplicate" is the number of duplicate hosts (machines) found under this top level domain. These are hosts that appear with more than one name, but with the same address (cname records are skipped automatically, and do not fall into this category)

• ``Real" is the ``Counted" number of machines minus the ``Duplicate" number of machines.

• ``Change" is change of the ``Real" count for this top level domain compared to the previous count (counts are usually performed once a month, at the end of each month. Therefore this figure represents the increase over the last month).

As it can be seen, the rate of growth of Internet hosts in Iran since the beginning of 1999 has been quite high, with a net increase in six months of 34%. This is a typical average figure for Internet's growth in Iran since its advent in 1992, although much higher growth rates have been seen, placing Iran among the top countries in terms of rate of growth of Internet access at times. ^1.1 By way of example, the number of Internet hosts in Iran in January 1998 was only 203, with only 19 web servers, a growth from only 4 Internet hosts in July 1994.

 

Table 1.1: Monthly progression of the number of Iranian Internet hosts - first and second quarter of 1999. See text for explanation of terms.

Date	SOA	Counted	Duplicates	Real	Change
01/05/99	65	740	68	672	-54
02/05/99	72	915	77	838	+166
03/05/99	77	891	90	801	-37
04/05/99	74	942	84	858	+57
05/05/99	75	846	83	763	-95
06/09/99	82	990	90	900	+137

 

Growth of the Iranian Internet over the first six months of 1999 is illustrated in Tables 1.3-1.5. The following definitions apply:

• Zones: The total number of zones (example: zone x.y.z) which were analyzed, either at a particular level of the Domain Name tree, of a particular size, for the .ir Top Level Domain (TLD).

• TLD: TLD stands for Top Level Domain. The DNS tree is made up of several generic TLDs like .com and many so-called country code Top Level Domains (ccTLD), such as .ir, which in general correspond to existing states (Iran) or geographic areas in the real world. ccTLDs are all designated by two letters and correspond, with a very few exceptions, to the two-letter country codes of the ISO 3166 standard.

  In the context of this hostcount, TLD refers to Iran's ccTLDs in the RIPE NCC service area.

  Note that zones which were encountered in an NS record but which could not be retrieved via the DNS, for whatever reason, are not included.

• Counted: The number of hosts which were counted while traversing the DNS.

• Duplicate: The number of hosts which were seen while traversing the DNS which had already been seen elsewhere.

• Empty/Small/Medium/Large/Huge: These labels refer to a classification decided by the size of a zone, where ``size" is determined by the number of hosts found in the zone. The following table shows the cut-off points for the 5 classifications:

  
  

   

  Table 1.2: Zone classifications.

  Classification	Hosts in Zone
  Empty	0
  Small	1-10
  Medium	11-100
  Large	101-1000
  Huge	1001+

   
  
  

  Some examples: a figure such as empty/zones/50, indicates that there were 50 zones found which contained no hosts. A combination such as large/hosts/2900 indicates that 2900 hosts on average were found in zones with 101-1000 hosts.

• Level X: The level in the Domain Name tree which is being analyzed. For instance, data from Level 1 refers to the IR TLD.

  The hostcount software analyzes all levels which exits in the data. However, to make results more presentable the numbers for all zones greater than level five are merged with the totals for level 5, hence the label Level 5+.

• People/Host: The number of people per real host for a given TLD.

• Population: The estimated number of people living in Iran.

  We are using data provided by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat (1998). It comes from the World Population Prospects: the 1998 Revision. The data was transcribed on 2/15/1999. These are estimates which are revised yearly. At the current time we are still using the 1998 figures.

• Real or Real Hosts: The number of non-duplicate hosts. This is always obtained by subtracting the duplicate hosts from the hosts that were counted.

• WWW Sites: This refers to address records counted that are running a web server, whether or not the first label in their domain name is www, e.g., www.nic.ir, or pearl.sums.ac.ir. Duplicate domain names are removed. Two different names with the same address are counted as two web sites.

 

Table 1.3: Growth rates of the Iranian Internet in terms of the number of hosts from January-June 1999. See text for explanation of terms.

	06/09/99	01/05/99	Change	% Change
Hosts Counted	990	740	+250	+33.8%
Duplicates Counted	90	68	+22	+32.3%
Real Hosts	900	672	+228	+33.9%
Zones Counted	82	65	+17	+26.1%
Average Hosts/Zone	12.1	11.4	+0.7	+6.1%
Average Real Hosts/Zone	11.0	10.3	+0.7	+6.8%
Average People/Real Host	73,064	97,854	-24,790	-25.3%
WWW Sites	93	70	+23	+32.9%

 

 

Table 1.4: Growth rates of the Iranian Internet in terms of the number of zones and their classes from January-June 1999. There are no ``large" or ``huge" zones for Iran. See text for explanation of terms.

		06/09/99	01/05/99	Change	% Change
	Hosts	0	0	0	0.0%
Empty	Zones	9	9	0	0.0%
	Hosts/Zone	0.0	0.0	0	0.0%
	Hosts	181	151	+31	+20.5%
Small	Zones	43	35	+8	+22.9%
	Hosts/Zone	4.2	4.3	-0.1	-2.3%
	Hosts	809	764	+45	+5.9%
Medium	Zones	30	28	-2	-7.1%
	Hosts/Zone	27.0	27.3	-0.3	-1.1%

 

 

Table 1.5: Growth rates of the Iranian Internet in terms of the number of domain levels and their classes from January-June 1999. There are no ``Level 5+" zones for Iran. See text for explanation of terms.

		06/09/99	01/05/99	Change	% Change
	Hosts	1	1	0	0.0%
Level 1	Zones	1	1	0	0.0%
	Hosts/Zone	1.0	1.0	0	0.0%
	Hosts	16	5	+11	+220%
Level 2	Zones	3	2	+1	+50%
	Hosts/Zone	5.3	2.5	+2.8	+112%
	Hosts	808	783	+25	+3.2%
Level 3	Zones	71	60	+11	+18.3%
	Hosts/Zone	11.4	13.1	-1.7	-13%
	Hosts	165	126	+39	+31%
Level 4	Zones	7	9	-2	-2.2%
	Hosts/Zone	23.6	14	+9.6	+68.6%

 

As of June 1999 therefore, there are only 900 Iranian hosts on the Internet (under the .ir top level domain). Caution should be exercised in quoting or using this number however, for the following important reasons:

1.

Hundreds of hosts, such as those at the Ministry of foreign affairs, other governmental offices, or the Iranian radio and television, are hidden from view behind firewalls.

2.

Increasing use of .com, .net, and .org domains by Iranian entities means that such hosts are not queried in the RIPE survey, which searches for domains under the .ir top level domain.

3.

Many companies and entities in Iran have only a few hosts connected to the Internet, which in turn feed entire local area networks with no direct Internet access and with local IP addresses.

Taking these into account, one can speculate that the real number of machines capable of accessing the Internet in Iran, is more than 10 times the 900 figure, and standing at around 9,000-11,000.

As for the number of current subscribers or users in Iran, extrapolating from previous estimates using host growth rates suggests that 65,000-80,000 people currently have Internet accounts in Iran. The breakdown is estimated as roughly 45-50,000 academic users, 5-8,000 government users, 5-8,000 industry users, and 10-12,000 individual users.

Both of these figures, for the number of hosts, and number of users, thus translates into a Level 2 classification (established) for the pervasiveness dimension. The level of Internet usage is at least one person in a thousand, but remains insufficiently available to the general public for widespread use.

This Level is consistent with the fact that the Internet has been in use in Iran for more than seven years and continues to grow, albeit slowly.