---
title: "The internet in 2001"
description: "Wikipedia launches in January, and nobody expects it to work. 29,254,370 websites, 128 kbps at home, and what a download actually took."
url: https://atoneplace.net/internet-in/2001/
site: "At One Place"
---

# The internet in 2001

**The internet in 2001: Wikipedia launches in January, and nobody expects it to work.**

29,254,370 hostnames · Broadband arriving properly. 128 kbps ISDN, 512 kbps DSL, and 56k for most people still.

Wikipedia was a side project attached to a failing expert-written encyclopaedia called Nupedia, and the near-universal expectation was that letting anyone edit would produce garbage. The iPod arrived with five gigabytes of storage — a thousand songs — at a moment when a gigabyte of hard disk cost about five dollars, which is the entire reason it was possible at that price. Napster's shutdown scattered its users into a dozen less centralised successors, which is the pattern every subsequent enforcement action has followed.

## The numbers

- **Websites:** 29,254,370 hostnames responding to HTTP
- **Typical connection:** 128 kbps — Broadband arriving properly. 128 kbps ISDN, 512 kbps DSL, and 56k for most people still.
- **A gigabyte of storage cost:** $5, in 2001 dollars

## How long things took to download

*Assuming the connection ran at its rated speed throughout, which it did not. Real dial-up throughput after protocol overhead was typically 10 to 20 per cent below the modem's rating.*

| What | At 128 kbps |
| --- | --- |
| A 3 MB song | 3 minutes |
| A 5 MB photo | 5 minutes |
| A 700 MB CD image | 12 hours 27 minutes |
| A 4 GB film | 3.0 days |
| A 50 GB game | 38 days |

## What arrived in 2001

- Wikipedia, on 15 January
- The iPod, in October
- Windows XP

## And what ended

- Napster, shut down by court order in July

## Against the years around it

| Year | Hostnames | Typical speed | $/GB of storage | A 4 GB film took |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2000 | 17,087,182 | 56 kbps | $10 | 6.9 days |
| 2001 | 29,254,370 | 128 kbps | $5 | 3.0 days |
| 2003 | 40,912,332 | 1.5 Mbps | $1 | 6 hours 13 minutes |

Between 2001 and 2020 the typical connection went from 128 kbps to 100 Mbps, a factor of 781, and a gigabyte of storage fell from $5 to $0.020 — a factor of 250. The 4 GB film that took 3.0 days takes 6 minutes.

## Common questions

### What was the internet like in 2001?

Wikipedia launches in January, and nobody expects it to work. A typical home connection was 128 kbps, there were about 29,254,370 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $5.

### How long did it take to download a film in 2001?

A 4 GB film at 128 kbps would have taken about 3.0 days, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.

### How many websites were there in 2001?

About 29,254,370 hostnames responded to HTTP. That counts hostnames rather than distinct sites, which is why the figure occasionally falls between years without the web shrinking.

## Related pages

- [The internet in 2000](https://atoneplace.net/internet-in/2000/)
- [The internet in 2003](https://atoneplace.net/internet-in/2003/)
- [Every year side by side](https://atoneplace.net/internet-in/)
- [Convert data units](https://atoneplace.net/convert/)

## Sources

- Web Server Survey — Netcraft (https://www.netcraft.com/blog/category/web-server-survey/)
- ICT Facts and Figures / World Telecommunication Indicators — International Telecommunication Union (https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/)
- Historical cost of computer memory and storage — Compiled from contemporaneous retail advertising and manufacturer price lists (/about/)