April 15, 2003 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Internet research organization Netcraft (Netcraft.com) announced on Monday that it has released the results of a study conducted using the company’s new technique for identifying the number of computers, rather than IP addresses, acting as Web servers, and attributing those computers to hosting locations through reverse DNS lookups.
The new data, says Netcraft, provides an independent view of the numbers of Web servers, rate of growth and the operating systems and server technology used at hosting providers worldwide. The company says the information will be valuable to hosting providers in conducting competitive analysis, mergers and acquisitions and identifying international markets for organic expansion, as well as to any organization selling products or services to the Web hosting business.
The technique uses IP addresses identified in the company’s Web Server Survey, and compares similarities in TCP/IP characteristics to determine whether they are housed on the same computer. But, because the technique records only the machines operating as Web servers in a data center, the data is likely to under-report the amount of equipment being used in certain cases, says Netcraft.
Results will vary depending on the type of site being considered, says Netcraft. A large commercial site like Amazon or Google may have tens of thousands of computers, only a few of which might be detected by the survey. The technique, says Netcraft, will likely be most useful in comparing companies operating large numbers of shared and dedicated equipment, where IP address comparisons might be misleading. Companies like Alabanza, Interland and Verio have over 100,000 IP addresses each through shared hosting services. Netcraft’s new data provides a more accurate depiction of the number of servers at those companies.
As a demonstration of the data available through the new report, Netcraft also released an excerpted table of the industry’s fastest-growing hosting providers, taken from those companies that started 2002 with more than 500 servers.
Netcraft says growth in the hosting business appears to be linked to providing good value at a low price, as the list was topped by 1&1 Internet, which offers low-priced shared hosting packages, as does the fourth-ranked Host Europe. Second-place RackShack has more or less defined the low-cost dedicated server, market, says Netcraft, and third-place Colt offers low-priced bandwidth in all the markets it serves.
