Demographic Studies of Internet Routers

Abstract

We investigate the current state of Internet infrastructures by examining the position and the number of routers considering various demographic data. The scaling relation between the router and the population densities is studied in two different scales, one is a worldwide scale and the other is a country scale. We found the number of routers in each country to be proportional to its economic level, and a super-linear scaling relation to exist between the router density and the Internet user density on a worldwide level. From a district analysis of the country level, we found that the scaling exponents change according to economic conditions and the level of Internet development. As the Internet penetration rate increases, the scaling exponent tends to be close to 2/3, indicating that routers are distributed like public facilities.