Your Internet Consultant - The FAQs of Life Online

1.10. Who uses the Internet?

Today, anyone can get an account on the Internet uses it. As you might imagine, people from every conceivable walk of life use it regularly. It's possible to make assumptions about the types of people using the Internet by looking at the distribution of host computers online. As of January, 1994,

605,402 hosts belonged to educational institutions.

567,686 hosts belonged to commercial organizations.

129,134 hosts belonged to governments.

103,507 hosts belonged to the U.S. military.

50,544 hosts belonged to nonprofit organizations and other undefined organizations.

12,608 hosts belonged to other networks.

Note: The preceding information primarily counts networked hosts in the United States.

It's interesting to note that of the hosts listed here, the second largest group (about 60 percent) are commercial sites. Remember, until very recently, the Internet was almost entirely comprised of government and educational institutions.

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