[ih] how big was the host file

[Michael Kjörling]

On 5 Feb 2020 20:33 +0000, from internet-history at elists.isoc.org (Jacques Latour via Internet-history):
> How big was the host file before the DNS came in action? 200K entries?

I'm not sure, but 200K entries sounds large.

RFCs 1034 and 1035 are dated November 1987. Though work began earlier,
that's probably a decent approximation for when "DNS came into
action".

RFC 1296 (January 1992) provides some data points on Internet growth
for the period 1981-1991. That one gives the number of hosts with an
IP address on the Internet in December 1987 as 28,174.

The next data point in that RFC is about half a year later, in July
1988, at 33,000; followed by October 1988, 56,000.

Even taking into account that migrating to DNS probably wasn't
instant, my guess for the size of the hosts file in late 1987 would be
a lot closer to 20K entries than 200K.

Extrapolating from the data in RFC 1296, the Internet would have
passed 200K IP hosts some time in mid-1990, with some 85% of those
(net) added post-DNS.

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se
 “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”