A worldwide study on the geographic locality of Internet routes

TL;DR

This study analyzes global Internet path locality, revealing regional differences and dependencies influenced by geographic, political, and economic factors, using metrics based on address space and population.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of worldwide Internet path locality, highlighting regional variations and identifying key factors and dependencies affecting non-local paths.

Findings

Significant regional differences in path locality

Identification of main factors influencing locality

Dependency relationships between countries due to non-local paths

Abstract

The topology of the Internet and its geographic properties received significant attention during the last years, not only because they have a deep impact on the performance experienced by users, but also because of legal, political, and economic reasons. In this paper, the global Internet is studied in terms of path locality, where a path is defined as local if it does not cross the borders of the region where the source and destination hosts are located. The phenomenon is studied from the points of view of two metrics, one based on the size of the address space of the autonomous systems where the endpoints are located and the other one on the amount of served population. Results show that the regions of the world are characterized by significant differences in terms of path locality. The main elements contributing to the path locality, and non-locality, of the regions and countries, are identified and discussed. Finally, we present the most significant dependency relationships between countries caused by non-local paths.