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Over 2.7 billion addresses have been charted by researchers performing the first Internet census since 1982.

Twenty-five years ago, the Internet neighborhood resembled a small subdivision. Only 315 addresses had been allocated.

The subdivision is more like William Gibson's 'Sprawl' these days. In the first census that's likely been conducted since 1982, according to researchers at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, more than 2.7 billion addresses have been allocated globally.

As noted by PhysOrg, the researchers' work involved pinging every address assigned on the Internet. Many of these pings, 61 percent, returned no information.

Over time, the researchers obtained a clearer picture of the Internet, as other machines responded to those ICMP packets. They have been able to render this in a color map, gradiated in color by the percentage of responses.

Addresses matter because this iteration of them, IPv4, could run out by 2011. The next Internet Protocol, version 6, will alleviate this shortage.