Political geographies of digital infrastructures: Contested spaces of Content Delivery Networks (CDN)

Keywords: digital geography, digital infrastructures, digital circulation
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The political relevance of data routing and its techno-material geographies has become strikingly visible, not least against the backdrop of infrastructural ruptures during the Ukraine war and the protests in Iran. Moreover, the political dimension of data routing becomes evident not only against the backdrop of military and civil disputes, but also with regard to controversial technical standardizations (such as current efforts by Huawei to introduce IPv6+ and New IP) and the political economy of digital communication through the expansion of cloud and network infrastructures. Against this backdrop, we examine the contested geographies of content delivery networks (CDNs). CDNs are networks of distributed cache servers through which data can be stored in geographic proximity to end-users. This reduces the latency of data traffic between web servers and client-side applications. With the rise of Data-intensive web services CDNs have become central Internet infrastructures. We ask to what extent this historical trend towards complex ecosystems for cloud computing has generated new network effects and lock-in effects and to what extent this leads to a reconfiguration of the functions of established Internet infrastructures and contributes to a loss of intended norms - such as net neutrality. With regard to the current debates on "digital sovereignty," we point to a historical trend that has received little attention so far: the fragmentation of Internet infrastructures into digital ecosystems.