What was the internet like in 2015?

A photograph of a dress divides the internet for a week. A typical home connection was 30 Mbps, there were about 863,105,652 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $0.040.

How long did it take to download a film in 2015?

A 4 GB film at 30 Mbps would have taken about 19 minutes, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.

How many websites were there in 2015?

About 863,105,652 hostnames responded to HTTP. That counts hostnames rather than distinct sites, which is why the figure occasionally falls between years without the web shrinking.

The internet in 2015

A photograph of a dress divides the internet for a week.

863,105,652 hostnames · Broadband at 30 Mbps. 4G general.

The dress was blue and black. That it looked white and gold to a large fraction of people is a genuine and well-studied perceptual effect about how the visual system discounts illumination, and it is the rare viral moment that turned out to be scientifically interesting. It also demonstrated, in about eighteen hours, the speed at which a single image could now reach essentially everybody, which was new.

The numbers

Websites: 863,105,652 hostnames responding to HTTP
Typical connection: 30 Mbps — Broadband at 30 Mbps. 4G general.
A gigabyte of storage cost: $0.040, in 2015 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 30 Mbps
A 3 MB song	1 seconds
A 5 MB photo	1 seconds
A 700 MB CD image	3 minutes
A 4 GB film	19 minutes
A 50 GB game	3 hours 53 minutes

What arrived in 2015

Discord
Apple Music
Let's Encrypt, in beta

Against the years around it

Year	Hostnames	Typical speed	$/GB of storage	A 4 GB film took
2013	672,985,183	20 Mbps	$0.050	28 minutes
2015	863,105,652	30 Mbps	$0.040	19 minutes
2016	1,045,534,808	50 Mbps	$0.030	11 minutes

Between 2015 and 2020 the typical connection went from 30 Mbps to 100 Mbps, a factor of 3, and a gigabyte of storage fell from $0.040 to $0.020 — a factor of 2. The 4 GB film that took 19 minutes takes 6 minutes.

Common questions

What was the internet like in 2015?: A photograph of a dress divides the internet for a week. A typical home connection was 30 Mbps, there were about 863,105,652 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $0.040.
How long did it take to download a film in 2015?: A 4 GB film at 30 Mbps would have taken about 19 minutes, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.
How many websites were there in 2015?: About 863,105,652 hostnames responded to HTTP. That counts hostnames rather than distinct sites, which is why the figure occasionally falls between years without the web shrinking.

The internet in 2013 Snowden, and encryption stops being a niche concern.
The internet in 2016 Pokémon Go empties offices, and TikTok launches quietly in China.
Every year side by side Speed, storage cost and site count in one table
Convert data units Bits, bytes, and why a megabit is not a megabyte

Sources

Web Server Survey — Netcraft
ICT Facts and Figures / World Telecommunication Indicators — International Telecommunication Union
Historical cost of computer memory and storage — Compiled from contemporaneous retail advertising and manufacturer price lists

How these figures are compiled and checked