Re: Again: Number of Firewall/NAT Users

[Paul Hoffman / IMC <phoffman at IMC.ORG>]

At 12:10 PM -0500 1/23/01, Frank Solensky wrote:
> One could ask a sample of administrators and extrapolate the results
> but, again, the problem becomes how confident you could be of the
> results if you don't get a very significant response rate

The problem is *much* worse than that. You have to be confident that 
your sampling method actually reflects enough of the Internet to be 
valid. Determining how you have reached a valid sample of 
administrators would be an interesting problem. Further, it is safe 
to assume that administrators for the largest networks are the least 
likely to reply, or to reply accurately.

And then there is the problem of assuming that they understand your 
question, and can even count the systems on their networks well 
enough to answer accurately...

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium