• Home
• ICT
• Digital Technology
• Statistics
• Archive
• Statistics on IT in NZ
• Statistics on IT 1996
• 7. Organisations on the Net

• Digital Technology

• Statistics

• Archive

• Statistics on IT in NZ

The data in this section is derived from figures supplied by Mark Davies of Victoria University of Wellington.

When an organisation connects to the Internet, it typically registers a "domain name". This section of the document attempts to estimate the numbers of organisations connected by counting domain names.

Each third level New Zealand domain, eg <name.co.nz>, that has been registered is assumed to belong to a separate organisation (this is in accordance with the policy of the domain name registry in New Zealand). 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 first graph shows the total number of network connected organisations as a time series over the last two years.

New Zealand Internet Domains

Data used to produce this graph

This graph displays the kind of exponential growth usually associated with the Internet. There is an accelerating annual growth in domains of 180-250%.

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 the policy for allocating names now, 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 others).

New Zealand Internet Domains Commercial Vs. Non-commercial

Data used to produce this graph

The growth rate in commercial domain registrations is itself rising steadily, and was 18% monthly compounding at the beginning of November 1995. The steep climb in the number of commercial domains tends to mask the fact that other domains are experiencing growth of 6-12% monthly.

The following graph shows how the non commercial organisations are split.

New Zealand Non-commercial Internet Domains

Data used to produce this graph

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 typically used to allow users of corporate mail system to send and receive Internet mail messages without offering them full Internet access. Both kinds of connection are growing rapidly.

The following graph shows the ratio of directly connected organisations to mail connected organisations split by organisation type.

Split Between Directly Connected and Mail-only Connected Organisations