In the April 2005 survey we received responses from 62,286,451 sites. The monthly gain of nearly 1.7 million hostnames marks the strongest growth thus far in 2005. When compared with previous years, the big gain suggests a seasonal pattern to the Internet's strongest growth. Last year's biggest month was April, with a similar gain of 1.7 million hostnames, while 2003's best showing was a 3.3million site gain in March. Those are the three largest monthly gains since the Internet economy began its recovery in 2002.

While this month's gain is notable, monthly growth of 1 million-plus hostnames is becoming routine. The survey has added at least 1 million sites in 10 of the last 18 months, compared to just three times in the previous 18-month period.

The web server market was little changed, however, with Apache picking up 0.2 percent share from Microsoft on the month.

The Vatican web site is struggling to handle a surge in web visitors seeking information on the deteriorating health of Pope John Paul II. Late last night Vatican officials announced that the 84-year-old Pontiff had suffered "septic shock and cardio-circulatory collapse" after receiving last rites earlier in the day.

Since its launch in 1995, the Vatican web site has become an important source of information about the Roman Catholic Church, and is available in six languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portuguese). The Vatican has had a lengthy technology partnership with Hewlett-Packard, which provides infrastructure to help the Holy See scale its web operations, which run on a Compaq Tru64 operating system. But with more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide, the site is likely to struggle while the Pope's condition remains the focus of attention.

A dynamically updating chart of the availability of vatican.va is available here.