Spoke–hub distribution paradigm

Hub and spoke airline route structures. Los Angeles and Denver are used as hubs.

The spoke-hub distribution paradigm (or model or network) is a system of connections arranged like a wire wheel, in which all traffic moves along spokes connected to the hub at the center. The model is commonly used in industry, in particular in transport, telecommunications and freight, as well as in distributed computing, where it is known as a star network.

Analysis of the model

The hub-and-spoke model is most frequently compared to the point-to-point transit model.

Benefits

Drawbacks

Commercial aviation

Main article: Airline hub

In 1955 Delta Air Lines pioneered the hub and spoke system at its hub in Atlanta, Georgia,[1] in an effort to compete with Eastern Air Lines. In the mid-1970s FedEx adopted the hub and spoke model for overnight package delivery, and after the airline industry was deregulated in 1978, Delta's hub and spoke paradigm was adopted by several other airlines.

Airlines have extended the hub-and-spoke model in various ways. One method is to create additional hubs on a regional basis, and to create major routes between the hubs. This reduces the need to travel long distances between nodes that are close together. Another method is to use focus cities to implement point-to-point service for high traffic routes, bypassing the hub entirely.

Transportation

The spoke-hub model is applicable to other forms of transportation:

For passenger road transport, the spoke-hub model does not apply because drivers generally take the shortest or fastest route between two points.

Industrial distribution

The hub-and-spoke model has also been used in economic geography theory to classify a particular type of industrial district. Ann Markusen, an economic geographer, theorised about industrial districts, where a number of key industrial firms and facilities act as a hub, with associated businesses and suppliers benefiting from their presence and arranged around them like the spokes of a wheel. The chief characteristic of such hub-and-spoke industrial districts is the importance of one or more large companies, usually in one industrial sector, surrounded by smaller, associated businesses. Examples of cities with such districts include Seattle (where Boeing was founded), Silicon Valley (a high tech hub), and Toyota City, with Toyota.

East Asian relations

In the sphere of East Asian relations, according to Victor Cha, hub-and-spokes refers to the network of bilateral alliances between United States and other individual East Asian countries. This system constructs a dominant bilateral security architecture in East Asia, differing from the multilateral security architecture in Europe. United States acts as a "hub" and Asian countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and Japan fall under the category "spokes." Whereas there is a strong alliance between the hub and the spoke, there are no firmly established connections between the spokes themselves.[2]

This system was famously inspired by John Foster Dulles, who served as US Secretary of State under the Eisenhower administration from 1953 to 1959. He addressed this term twice in Tokyo and once at the San Francisco Peace Treaty of September 1951. This led to talks for bilateral peace treaty between US and Japan. Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan of 1951, U.S.-South Korea Status of Forces Agreement of 1953 or U.S.-Republic of China Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954 (replaced by the Taiwan Relations Act) are some of the examples that manifests these bilateral relations.[3]

In April 2014, all ten ASEAN defense chiefs and United States Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel attended the U.S.-ASEAN Defense Forum in Hawaii. This marked the first time the U.S. had hosted the forum. This was part of an American attempt to get the countries to strengthen military ties between themselves.[4]

See also

References

  1. Delta Air Lines Newsroom - Press Kit. Delta.com. Retrieved on 2013-08-16.
  2. Cha, V. D. (2010). "Powerplay: Origins of the U.S. Alliance System in Asia". International Security 34 (3): 158–196. doi:10.1162/isec.2010.34.3.158.
  3. Hemmer, C.; Katzenstein, P. J. (2002). "Why is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism". International Organization 56 (3): 575. doi:10.1162/002081802760199890. JSTOR 3078589.
  4. Keck, Zachary (2 April 2014). "US Swears Asia Pivot Isn't Dead". thediplomat.com. The Diplomat. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
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