Internet Backbone Traffic

Someone in the past week asserted that, at $1000 a gig, one could store
all of a year's worth of mail headers from the Internet backbone for under 
~$8.7 million. (8700 gigs of data, I presume?)

Sorry, I don't remember who it was, but I have some questions:

1) Where can I find an estimate of the mail volume on the net?
2) Are there any projections of internet usage (subscribers, mail users,
etc.) over the next several years?

I plan on holding an educational session on net legal issues, and I would
like to point out the $8.7 million/year price tag on a mail header
archive (scary potentials, to say the least), but I would like some sources to
back me up if I assert it.

Can anyone help me out?  I'd really appreciate it.
-john.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Blair <jdblair@nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu>              phone: (513) 529-4879
    Insert cool signature file that makes a trendy, yet bold and original
   statement about my cyberspace proficiency, then mentions that I'll send
   you my PGP public key if you want it, and you trust that I'm actually me.

> 
> Someone in the past week asserted that, at $1000 a gig, one could store
> all of a year's worth of mail headers from the Internet backbone for under 
> ~$8.7 million. (8700 gigs of data, I presume?)
> 
> Sorry, I don't remember who it was, but I have some questions:
> 
> 1) Where can I find an estimate of the mail volume on the net?
> 2) Are there any projections of internet usage (subscribers, mail users,
> etc.) over the next several years?
> 
> I plan on holding an educational session on net legal issues, and I would
> like to point out the $8.7 million/year price tag on a mail header
> archive (scary potentials, to say the least), but I would like some sources to
> back me up if I assert it.
> 
> Can anyone help me out?  I'd really appreciate it.
> -john.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> John Blair <jdblair@nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu>              phone: (513) 529-4879
>     Insert cool signature file that makes a trendy, yet bold and original
>    statement about my cyberspace proficiency, then mentions that I'll send
>    you my PGP public key if you want it, and you trust that I'm actually me.
> 
> 
> 
Telnet to internic.net and choose the gopher option.  They have statistics
of various types (and all kinds of other misc. info)

 -Jim

John Blair <jdblair@nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu> writes -

> 1) Where can I find an estimate of the mail volume on the net?
> 2) Are there any projections of internet usage (subscribers, mail users,
> etc.) over the next several years?

 Vint Cerf, President of the Internet Society, projected some
 interesting figures at ONE BBSCON in Colorado recently. According
 to an article in the October BoardWatch magazine, ".....by December,
 1993, there will be over 2 million ping-able hosts on some 46,000
 registered IP networks in 22,000 registered domains strewn across some
 91 countries. As of June, 1991, it is NOT primarily academic use, but
 actually that was the crossover point where commercial use applications
 exceeded academic use. Over 137 countries are now reachable via the
 Internet domain name e-mail system via UUCP, and the NSFNet backbone
 is now carrying some 7 TERABYTES of traffic per month. The Internet
 overall is growing at a rate of 12% per MONTH."

 You do the math.  ,-)

 Cheers.