The Gopher universe is smol
===========================

Random Gopher servers
---------------------
I regular open the Gopher page with 5 random servers, see [1].

Do this long enough, and you will come across Gopher servers
that you have seen there before.

This made me wonder how much Gopher servers there are.

Consulting Floodgap
-------------------
To get an idea about the number of Gopher servers, I consulted
Floodgap.

I looked at the Gopher page called
"All the gopher servers (that we know of)", see [2].

This page lists links to Gopher servers split out to tld
and/or continent, and quickly counting these links resulted in
a count of somewhere around 310 servers.

Also I looked at the Gopher page
"Search Gopherspace with Veronica-2", see [3]
Here you find a link to statistics, and the statistics page
mention 319 unique servers (counting host and port pairs).

So, it seems that according to Floodgap there are
about 320 Gopher servers in the world.

Shocking smol
-------------
This result, a total of 320 Gopher servers, felt to
me as shocking smol.

I knew that the Gopher universe is relative small compared
to the world wide web. Also there are some servers that
host the Gopher holes for many users, like sdf.org.

But still, only 320 servers, I hadn't expected such a low
number.

The Gopher Universe is indeed very smol.

Of course, being a smol universe is not necessary a bad
thing. Maybe it is just because of this, that we like
to move around in the realm...


[1]: gopher://gopher.viste.fr/1/ogup/rnd
[2]: gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/world 
[3]: gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/v2


Last edited: $Date: 2023/09/30 20:41:55 $