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• 7. Organisations on the Net

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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, eg 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 good 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.

New Zealand Internet Domains

It is clear there has been strong growth in the registering of domains in New Zealand, particularly over the last three years. By March 1998, there were 16,616 registered domain names, which means there are some 16,616 New Zealand organisations with some form of Internet connection.

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:

This table represents current 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).

New Zealand Internet Domains Commercial Vs. Non-commercial

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 14,588 in the last two years. In the year to March 1998, the annual growth rate in the registration of commercial domains was 75%, down from 227% the year previously. However, the lower 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.

Over the last year growth in the registration of non-commercial domains also increased to 2,028, 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 75%.

Companies Registered on the Internet in New Zealand

The following graph plots the commercial domain registration growth rate against the growth rate of all the domains and the .org domain name growth rate.

The .org domain name is now the second most popular second level domain name and as the graph shows, is still clearly growing at a faster rate than the registration of commercial domains and the total. Over the year to March 1998, registration of .org domains grew at 101%, while total domain name registrations grew at a rate of 73% and as noted previously, commercial domain registration grew at 75%. As the graph shows, these are all much lower growth rates than recorded in previous years.

Annual Growth Rate of .co, .org & all Domain Names in New Zealand

The chart below shows how the non commercial domain registrations are split for the March years 1996 to 1998. The chart shows the significant growth in the number of organisations registering under the .org. domain. This domain now comprises 39% of the non-commercial domains, up from 18% in March 1996. The .net domain is also showing ongoing growth over and above the other domains and now represents 13% of non-commercial domains, while the number of schools registering under the .school domain also continues to grow, although at a more modest rate.

The one domain to show a decrease is the .gen domain, which has decreased as a proportion of the non-commercial domains to just 15%.

New Zealand Non-commercial Internet Domains

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 1998. It indicates 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. By March 1998, 67% of connected organisations were directly connected, up from 40% in 1994.

Split Between Directly Connected and Mail-only Connected Organisations

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 eg tvone.co.nz, and does not take into account non-active web sites.

The chart below shows the total number of web sites split into commercial (co.nz) web sites and non-commercial web sites estimated in this way from February 1997 to March 1998. The chart shows that the vast majority (7,730 or 86%) of web sites in New Zealand have been set up by commercial organisations and that the total number of web sites has doubled over the last year from just under 4,000 to a total of 8,920.

New Zealand WWW Domains February 1997 to March 1998