  This paper introduces a method to generate hierarchically modular networks
with prescribed node degree list by link switching. Unlike many existing
network generating models, our method does not use link probabilities to
achieve modularity. Instead, it utilizes a user-specified topology to determine
relatedness between pairs of nodes in terms of edge distances and links are
switched to increase edge distances. To measure the modular-ness of a network
as a whole, a new metric called Q2 is proposed. Comparisons are made between
the Q [15] and Q2 measures. We also comment on the effect of our modularization
method on other network characteristics such as clustering, hierarchy, average
path length, small-worldness, degree correlation and centrality. An application
of this method is reported elsewhere [12]. Briefly, the generated networks are
used as test problems to explore the effect of modularity and degree
distribution on evolutionary search algorithms.
