6,000+, and those machines served many others (back then there were tens of thousands of machines on the Internet, but probably 10x as many that were connected to these by relays that handled email or Usenet traffic).
Also worth remember that especially with Internet-connected computers almost everything was multiuser. You did work on the Internet from a shell on a shared Unix server, not from a laptop.
tptacek|3 months ago
hshdhdhehd|3 months ago