Abstract
This study examines the communications networks formed by direct international Internet links, weighted by bandwidth capacity, each year over the 2002–2011 period. Specifically, we analyze changes in bandwidth distributions at country, regional, and continental levels during the period and identify network communities at these different levels. We apply an urn-based model developed with country-level data to bandwidth distributions at regional and continental levels. While the 2011 global Internet network closely resembles that of 2002, the network has become more tightly interconnected over time, and the high international bandwidth regions of Northern Europe, Northern America, and Western Europe have seen a modest decline in their share of total global bandwidth. As a consequence, international bandwidth concentration is showing a slow decline. Relative connectedness as measured by percentage of bandwidth staying within UN geographic regions is decreasing, whereas the percentage remaining within the continent has been fairly constant during the analysis period. All of this must be understood in the context of enormous total international bandwidth growth between 2002 and 2011 at all levels of analysis.
Highlights
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have resulted in important changes, especially with regard to building and maintaining social relationships and producing and sharing information and knowledge
International Internet bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can be transferred over the Internet, across national borders, in a given amount of time, and has been argued to be a good indicator of transnational Internet-traffic flows [9]
Countries that were central in the 2002 global Internet network with a larger number of direct connections with other countries and with relatively large amounts of international bandwidth mainly remained so in 2011
Summary
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have resulted in important changes, especially with regard to building and maintaining social relationships and producing and sharing information and knowledge. Countries that were central in the 2002 global Internet network with a larger number of direct connections with other countries and with relatively large amounts of international bandwidth mainly remained so in 2011. This procedure resulted in 30 network graphs—one for each year in the 2002–2011 period under study for countries, regions, and continents.
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