"People and information want to be closer. When planning where to put capacity, network designers are guided by the law of locality; this law states that network traffic is at least 80% local, 95% continental and only 5% intercontinental. Between 1997 and 1999, for example, 30% of all U.S. Internet traffic never crossed the national infrastructure but stayed within a local metropolitan network."

–John Thackara, In the Bubble: Designing In A Complex World.