poole@eunet.ch (Simon Poole) writes: * Marten, * * I think it would be a good idea to supply reachability information * with these stats. ping'ing the addresses is a fairly good reality check * (for example in Switzerland only about a third of the "hosts" are actually * reachable according to the US domain survey). Simon, I have got some major problems with pinging each and every host in the hostcount: - Not all hosts respond to a ping (PCs for instance) but are part of the Internet in my view. Given the large amounts of PCs around, this will pull your figure down. - Not all hosts are reachable from all parts of the Internet (AUP, firewalls, access filters). Define "reachable on the Internet" for me ... Doing pings from one central place may give distorted figures. - I'd like to keep the once a month stats going, pinging all hosts may cause the program to run for a week or so I think I made reasonably clear what the hostcount indicates, it certainly does NOT indicate reachability. I am willing to write some scripts to see how long it takes and what the results are. I'll give it a go for CH. * Additionally, it would be a good idea to include a short statement * as to what the numbers actually mean, and a disclaimer. Background: * more and more these numbers are used in PR, it is very well imaginable * that there might be legal trouble at one point in time. Err, yes. I'll take it up with my management ;-) -Marten