Folks turn to statistics to yeild demographic portraits of the net, but unfortunately, Internet users tend to be elusive beasts. Often, while trying to grasp hold of the oft told explosive growth of the Internet, user counts, and user statistics are hurled about with astonishing disregard. People intent on proving their point toss out figures without traces of substantiation. In fact, controversy has arisen over this issue. It is hard to say how many different computers there are on the Internet, and it is impossible to know how many users there are on those computers.
Estimates generally range from two to thirty million.
When you are doing a statistical survey of the Net, this is an important distinction to make - it means a difference in the millions. In terms of internet statistics, their definitions are critical to discussion of the size of the net. For the Matrix, we estimate 27.5 million users who can exchange electronic mail with other users in the Matrix, as of October 1994. With these, they set up useful Internet user count differentiation. The attached numbers are of course still gross estimations, but they are more convincing broken down into this form.