Perhaps the most interesting part of the survey is the census of Internet name servers, which this year showed an estimated 11.7 million name servers. (Last year’s survey estimated 9 million, while the previous year’s estimate was 7.5 million.) Of these, about 70% ran the BIND name server. A higher percentage of these were the most recent version, BIND 9 (64.5% versus 60.7%), while the percentage of obsolete BIND 4 and BIND 8 name servers declined sharply (BIND 8 from 13.7% to 5.6%, BIND 4 from .4% to .2%).

The Microsoft DNS Server’s share continued its dramatic decline, from about 4.6% to 2.7%. Perhaps this is because administrators have become warier of exposing the Microsoft DNS Server and Windows operating systems directly to the Internet.