7. Organisations on the Internet
The data in this section is derived from figures compiled by Mark Davies of Victoria University of Wellington.
When an organisation connects to the Internet, it typically registers a "domain name". In this section we attempt to estimate the numbers of New Zealand organisations connected by counting the registered domain names.
Each third level New Zealand domain, e.g. name.co.nz, that has been registered is assumed to belong to a separate organisation. Sub-domains are not counted, thus moc.govt.nz is counted but comms.moc.govt.nz is not. In general each third level domain is given to a different organisation, be it a company, school, government department etc, so domains are a reasonable measure of the number of organisations connected.
The following graph shows the total number of network connected organisations as a time series since July 1994.
It is clear there has been strong growth in the registering of domains in New Zealand, particularly over the last three years. However, growth is linear rather than exponential, corresponding to the addition of between 800 and 1200 names per month. By March 1999, there were 28,388 registered domain names in the .nz domain. This gives an approximation to the number of organisations connected, assuming one domain name per organisation. Note that New Zealand organisations registering in the generic TLDs such as .com and .org (estimated at about 6%) are not counted but overseas based organisations registering in .nz (likely to be a small number) will be.
7.1 Types of Organisation
Organisations are allocated domain names according to organisation type. The penultimate part of a name, such as the "co" in <name.co.nz> is used to categorise domains. This part of the name is often called a second level domain. In New Zealand the following second level domains are used:
| Second Level Domain | Normally Used By: |
|---|
| ac.nz | Tertiary educational institutions |
| co.nz | Companies |
| cri.nz | Crown Research Institutes |
| gen.nz | Individuals and organisations which do not fit the other categories |
| govt.nz | Central government agencies and local and regional councils |
| iwi.nz | Iwi organisations |
| mil.nz | Military organisations |
| net.nz | Internet Service Providers |
| org.nz | Non-profit organisations and incorporated societies |
| school.nz | Schools |
This table represents current and customary usage, and does not cover a number of historical anomalies. In particular, ISPs have been registered in ac.nz, gen.nz and co.nz as well as net.nz.
While there is provision for individuals to have domain names of their own in the gen.nz domain, most do not. Therefore numbers of domains registered is not a good indicator of individuals using the Internet.
The following graph shows the split of commercial (co.nz) to non-commercial organisations (all other second level domain names registered).
The graph shows that much of the increase in registered domain names is due to the registration of commercial domains, which have increased from 2,551 to 24,695 in the last three years. In the year to March 1999, the annual growth rate in the registration of commercial domains was 69%, compared with 75% in 1998 and 227% in 1997. The decreasing growth rate is an indication that there is now an established base of organisations with a registered domain name and Internet connection in New Zealand and reflects the linear increase in registrations referred to above.
Over the last year growth in the registration of non-commercial domains also increased to 3,693 (82%), although the numbers of non-commercial domains are well overshadowed by the number of commercial domains registered.
The next graph plots the commercial domain information from the previous graph, however, a line mapping the annual growth rate of the registration of commercial domain names is added. This graph also shows the substantial growth in New Zealand companies registering a domain name on the Internet over the last two to three years. The line plotting the annual growth rate shows that it peaked in April 1996 at 616%, and has fallen steadily since to its current rate of 69%.
The chart below shows how the non commercial domain registrations are split for the March years 1996 to 1999. The .net.nz domain was the fastest growing non-commercial domain in 1998 and now represents 25% of non-commercial domains. The .org.nz and .school.nz domains have about maintained their level (at 37% and 12% respectively), while older established groups such as .ac.nz, .govt.nz, .gen.nz and .cri.nz now make up a smaller proportion of the registrations even though the actual number of registrations has increased.
7.2 Direct Connection Versus Mail-Only Connection
There are two ways in which an organisation can connect to the Internet: a direct connection allowing full access, or a mail only connection. The latter type of connection would typically be used to enable the users of a corporate mail system to send and receive Internet mail messages, without providing them full Internet access.
The following graph shows the ratio of directly connected organisations to mail connected organisations in New Zealand for the March years 1994 to 1999. The proportion of organisations connecting directly to the Internet is growing far more rapidly than the proportion choosing mail only connections, although the latter category is still growing. The 1999 figures include a new `unknown' category resulting from the refusal by a growing number of organisations to allow their domain name data to be examined by the process used for gathering this information. This probably reflects a growing concern over privacy and security issues and thus is a symptom of the increasing importance and commercial nature of the Internet.
7.3 New Zealand World Wide Web Sites
The number of organisations with an Internet registered domain provides no indication of how many New Zealand organisations have now established Web sites on the Internet. To estimate this, one must count each World Wide Web domain name that has been registered, ie all the domain names of the format: www.name.domain.nz. However, this only gives an estimate of the number of Web sites, as it double counts organisations using different formats e.g. tvone.co.nz, and does not take into account non-active Web sites.
The chart below shows the total number of sites split into commercial (co.nz) Web sites and non-commercial Web sites estimated in this way from February 1997 to March 1999. There were 15,241 Web sites in New Zealand as of March 1999 of which 12,929 or 85% have been set up by commercial organisations. Overall there was an increase of 71% in Web sites over the year from March 1998.
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