Patent ID: 8577609

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing therein map data, the map data comprising: link data that describes a characteristic of each link in a group of links on a link-by-link basis, the group of links forming a road network; and segment data that relates to each segment in a group of segments on a segment-by-segment basis, a segment being defined for each link string, which is a string of multiple links, corresponding to a main road, which is any road that includes a highway, and no segment being defined for each link string corresponding to a non-main road, which is any road that does not include a highway, wherein each link string forming a segment terminates at least at an intersection of a main road, wherein the multiple links forming the group of segments are a part of the group of links forming the road network, and wherein segment data related to a particular segment describes information on a storage location of the link data corresponding to the link string that forms the particular segment.