According to U.K.-based Netcraft's latest survey of Web hostnames, some 2.76 million were added in June, the second-highest monthly increase ever, and the largest since May, 2003, when 3.3 million were added, kicking off the Internet's resurgence after the dot-com disasters earlier in the century.
Since the first of the year, Netcraft noted, the Internet has added 10.7 million hostnames.
"Barring a dramatic slowdown, 2005 should easily exceed the record growth of 16 million hostnames in 2000," Netcraft said in a statement.
The number of active sites, however, is much less than the nearly 67 million hostnames indicates. By Netcraft's numbers, active sites tally under 34 million.
Netcraft spotted four drivers of the hostname boom, including more affordable Web storefronts for small businesses, the blog boom (a growing number of blogs are purchasing domains for branding purposes, Netcraft said), speculation in domain names, and strong online advertising sales.
In other Internet number-related news, Netcraft said that Apache continued to power the overwhelming share of Web servers -- nearly 70 percent -- while Microsoft stayed a distant second at 23 percent. b