IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jgeosy/v5y2003i4p381-405.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mapping the Internet using GIS: The death of distance hypothesis revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Yong Wang
  • Phillip Lai
  • Daniel Sui

Abstract

This paper revisits the death of distance hypothesis. To explore the role of distance in the information age, three methods – web scan, hyperlink, and trace-route – are used to map the Internet for the US educational network. Statistical analysis is conducted to evaluate whether physical distance has any impact on the Internet information access. The cartographic and statistical results indicate that geography in general and distance in particular are still important factors in shaping the spatial pattern of Internet activities. For the most popular fifty-three US educational web sites, the physical distance within one thousand miles has positive effects on Internet access while access to international hosts heavily depends on the response time, link speed and other Internet infrastructures and interconnections such as the availability of domain name servers, network access points, backbones, etc. Implications of absolute, relative, and virtual distance in mapping the Internet are discussed. It is concluded that the death of distance hypothesis is premature, even misguided in most cases. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003

Suggested Citation

  • Yong Wang & Phillip Lai & Daniel Sui, 2003. "Mapping the Internet using GIS: The death of distance hypothesis revisited," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 381-405, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jgeosy:v:5:y:2003:i:4:p:381-405
    DOI: 10.1007/s10109-003-0117-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10109-003-0117-9
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10109-003-0117-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Baker, R.G.V., 2012. "Towards a physics of Internet traffic in a geographic network," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(4), pages 1133-1148.
    2. Emmanouil Tranos & Peter Nijkamp, 2013. "The Death Of Distance Revisited: Cyber-Place, Physical And Relational Proximities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(5), pages 855-873, December.
    3. Emmanouil Tranos & Karima Kourtit & Peter Nijkamp, 2014. "Digital urban network connectivity: Global and Chinese internet patterns," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 93(2), pages 409-428, June.
    4. R. Baker, 2005. "Instantaneous global spatial interaction? Exploring the Gaussian inequality, distance and Internet pings in a global network," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 361-379, December.
    5. Krzysztof Janc, 2015. "Geography of Hyperlinks-Spatial Dimensions of Local Government Websites," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(5), pages 1019-1037, May.
    6. Giancarlo Giudici & Massimiliano Guerini & Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, 2018. "Reward-based crowdfunding of entrepreneurial projects: the effect of local altruism and localized social capital on proponents’ success," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 307-324, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jgeosy:v:5:y:2003:i:4:p:381-405. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.