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Fibre Optic Cables: The Internet Backbone

The Internet backbone is the top tier of the Internet.

It consists of many networks owned by numerous companies.

The routing of prominent undersea cables that serve as the physical infrastructure of the Internet are optical fibre trunk lines consisting of many fibre cables bundled to increase capacity, or bandwidth.

Fibre-optic communication remains the medium of choice for Internet backbone providers for several reasons.

They:

allow for fast data speeds and large bandwidth. The data rates of backbone lines have increased over time.

suffer relatively little attenuation, allowing them to cover long distances with few repeaters

are also immune to crosstalk and other forms of electromagnetic interference which plague electrical transmission.

The real-time routing protocols and redundancy built into the backbone is also able to reroute traffic in case of a failure.