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Spatial structure of the internet traffic

Author

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  • Barthelemy, Marc
  • Gondran, Bernard
  • Guichard, Eric

Abstract

The Internet infrastructure is not virtual: its distribution is dictated by social, geographical, economical, or political constraints. However, the infrastructure's design does not determine entirely the information traffic and different sources of complexity such as the intrinsic heterogeneity of the network or human practices have to be taken into account. In order to manage the Internet expansion, plan new connections or optimize the existing ones, it is thus critical to understand correlations between emergent global statistical patterns of Internet activity and human factors. We analyze data from the French national ‘Renater’ network which has about 2 millions users and which consists in about 30 interconnected routers located in different regions of France and we report the following results. The Internet flow is strongly localized: most of the traffic takes place on a ‘spanning’ network connecting a small number of routers which can be classified either as ‘active centers’ looking for information or ‘databases’ providing information. We also show that the Internet activity of a region increases with the number of published papers by laboratories of that region, demonstrating the positive impact of the Web on scientific activity and illustrating quantitatively the adage ‘the more you read, the more you write’.

Suggested Citation

  • Barthelemy, Marc & Gondran, Bernard & Guichard, Eric, 2003. "Spatial structure of the internet traffic," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 319(C), pages 633-642.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:319:y:2003:i:c:p:633-642
    DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(02)01382-1
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Joyez, Charlie, 2017. "On the topological structure of multinationals network," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 473(C), pages 578-588.
    2. Charlie Joyez, 2017. "Network Structure of French Multinational Firms," Working Papers DT/2017/08, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    3. Isabel Cavalli & Charlie Joyez, 2021. "The Dynamics of French Universities in Patent Collaboration Networks," GREDEG Working Papers 2021-38, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    4. Marc Barthélemy & Alessandro Flammini, 2009. "Co-evolution of Density and Topology in a Simple Model of City Formation," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 401-425, September.
    5. Garratt, Rodney J. & Mahadeva, Lavan & Svirydzenka, Katsiaryna, 2014. "The great entanglement: The contagious capacity of the international banking network just before the 2008 crisis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 367-385.
    6. M. Serrano & Marián Boguñá & Alessandro Vespignani, 2007. "Patterns of dominant flows in the world trade web," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 2(2), pages 111-124, December.

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