The nature of the Internet, in particular its anarchic beginnings with no central controlling authority and the consequent lack of mandatory registration for individual users or computers, makes it notoriously difficult to determine exactly how large it is.  This problem is further compounded by the fact that more IP addresses have been allocated than are currently used; a single IP address can be used for entire networks such as AOL or CompuServe; and that there may be multiple users for a single computer or computer network.  Nevertheless, there have been some attempts to determine how many people use the Internet, all of which show that the Internet is growing very big, very quickly.  For a well respected account of this growth, see Matthew K. Gray's, of MIT, web page on "Internet Statistics: Growth and Usage of the Web and the Internet".  Alternatively, Russ Haynal, an Internet consultant, instructor, author and speaker has also prepared an "Internet Growth Statistics" web page which is current to February 1999.  You can click here to view his page.  A further source on Internet growth is Network Wizards' "Internet Domain Name Survey".  Click here to view the latest such survey.