[ih] how big was the host file

[Clem Cole]

Which gave way to ‘themes’ - Sam Leffler set the UCB CRG theme to be famous
painters.   I set the CAD to be drinks (not sure what that says about the
two of us).

On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 10:54 PM Guy Almes via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>    Two other phenomena of the years before the DNS came into use was
> that some sites would (in a sense) reserve a series of names so that, as
> host computers were acquired, these hosts would have related names.
>    So the first phenomenon was the set of imaginative naming
> conventions, famously starting with the use of plants from the Sunset
> Garden book at PARC, were interesting in themselves.  Names of planets
> and names of characters from Leave it to Beaver were among the less
> famous examples.  Many members of this list can probably remember local
> examples.  When the net was young, a given site might be known for such
> a name set, then if a new host that fit that name series came up,
> people would know/suspect that the host was from the site known for that
> set of names.
>    The second  phenomenon was the reserving of names for hosts that did
> not yet exist.  This reserving was necessary to preserve the integrity
> of the logic of a series of names.  But I mention it because, when I
> looked at a hosts.txt file in 1984, it seemed that the size of the file
> was significantly influenced by this 'reserving'.
>
>    I mention this, in part, let anyone assume that the number of entries
> in a given hosts.txt file was an accurate estimate of the number of
> actually existing hosts.
>
>         -- Guy
>
> On 2/5/20 16:52, Joseph Touch via Internet-history wrote:
> > FWIW - the host file was only for off-site systems; it was (AFAICT
> typically) augmented with the local list of hosts. At some places, ihis was
> fairly large as well.
> >
> > Joe
> >
> >> On Feb 5, 2020, at 2:15 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> A little Google work got me:
> >>
> >>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.saildart.org_allow_HOSTS.TXT-5BHST-2CNET-5D22&d=DwIGaQ&c=u6LDEWzohnDQ01ySGnxMzg&r=TYwsdLfWZb_3Papdtpdxyg&m=wh6sM7RtA720exZZ3SbWmGV3FMjepxc-DK8l_2hQYO8&s=Wy7u4JRpgkO3nTQT36WqlweJpOzk8zVWmK5KXNB0j2o&e=
> >> June 1985, 1528 hostnames.
> >>
> >>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.saildart.org_allow_HOSTS.TXT-5BHST-2CNET-5D25&d=DwIGaQ&c=u6LDEWzohnDQ01ySGnxMzg&r=TYwsdLfWZb_3Papdtpdxyg&m=wh6sM7RtA720exZZ3SbWmGV3FMjepxc-DK8l_2hQYO8&s=yj1oLTK106ZsuGeDLdGAd2twzBe2FTPf0o5m3SDToag&e=
> >> December 1986, 4480 hostnames.
> >>
> >>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.saildart.org_allow_HOSTS.TXT-5BHST-2CNET-5D27&d=DwIreGaQ&c=u6LDEWzohnDQ01ySGnxMzg&r=TYwsdLfWZb_3Papdtpdxyg&m=wh6sM7RtA720exZZ3SbWmGV3FMjepxc-DK8l_2hQYO8&s=ARi6x1MM5KkZSD3EF-ca89vFLytQnDZePbJ4MmsoQGo&e=
> >> May 1987, 5343 hostnames.
> >>
> >>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.saildart.org_allow_HOSTS.TXT-5BHST-2CNET-5D29&d=DwIGaQ&c=u6LDEWzohnDQ01ySGnxMzg&r=TYwsdLfWZb_3Papdtpdxyg&m=wh6sM7RtA720exZZ3SbWmGV3FMjepxc-DK8l_2hQYO8&s=c6jsTZJDTm9mwDjob6SAzXVFsfSz98H0BnaIVASnvpI&e=
> >> November 1988, 7083 hostnames.
> >>
> >> Compare these to the RFC1296 size estimates of the Internet:
> >>
> >> 1985: 1961 nodes
> >> 1986: 5089
> >> 1987: 28174
> >> 1988: 56000
> >>
> >> In other words, the NIC table was overwhelmed by growth by 1986 and its
> size had ceased to matter by then. From those numbers, it looks as if DNS
> superseded hosts.txt in practice around mid-1986. Read the introductory
> text of RFC1296 for more.
> >>
> >> Regards
> >>    Brian Carpenter
> >>
> >> On 06-Feb-20 09:53, Michael Kjörling via Internet-history wrote:
> >>> 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.
> >>>
> >>
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> >>
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> >
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