fibreoptic cable routing (Dodge, Martin), 2001

Internet infrastructure in the Republic of Korea (Dodge, Martin), 1995

the «dotcom» hype of the late 1990s that led to significant over investment in fibreoptic infrastructure.

Maps for Strategic Planning And Policy

Maps have been key strategic devices used in planning and implementing urban and regional development, plotting military strategy and the conquest of new lands, and legally contesting land ownership and use. Unsurprisingly then they are also being used in the short and long term strategic planning of Internet development by commercial enterprises, governmental, quasi-governmental, and other interested bodies (e.g. the Internet Society). In order to structure the analysis I have divided the discussion into two related themes. The first concerns the planning and development of infrastructure, the second, regional development, the attraction of inward investment, and the monitoring and addressing of inequalities. At one level, maps have been used in the planning, development and expansion of network infrastructure at a variety of scales from individual buildings to global networks. Planning the optimum topology for a communications network to efficiently interconnect

geographically dispersed locations is an exacting task. Maps help visualize complex network topologies and how new configurations will look and operate—see the ‹back of the envelope› hand drawn sketch map from the early planning of ARPANET [10] and the fibreoptic cable routing in downtown Philadelphia. By mapping companies in relation to cable-routing the city can adequately provide network connections and plan extensions that will hopefully attract in new customer. At a larger-scale, countries are crisscrossed by many interconnected networks. An important function for ISPs is to easily and efficiently interconnect and exchange local traffic at neutral peering points as shown by examples of national-level maps tracking the Internet infrastructure in the Republic of Korea. The maps are valuable policy and research resource creating a census of the growing complexity of the links between ISPs and their capacity. At a second level, maps have been employed in the strategic planning and implementation of regional development and in monitoring and addressing inequalities, the so-called digital divide, between places. Again, the data relates to several scales from intra-urban to global.