# Internet backbone

> The highest-capacity long-distance links that carry traffic between big networks.

- Level: Intermediate
- Topics: Networks
- URL: https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/internet-backbone/
- In Spanish: [Backbone de internet](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/es/internet-backbone/)

The internet is a network of networks, and they are not all the same size. Your home connects to your local provider, which connects to bigger regional networks, which connect to a small group of very large carriers running fiber across countries and under oceans. Those core long-distance, high-capacity links are called the **internet backbone**.

There is no single owner. The backbone is many companies' networks stitched together. They meet at **internet exchange points** and in shared data centers, where they swap traffic. The biggest carriers, called **Tier 1 networks**, can reach every part of the internet just by exchanging traffic with each other for free, known as peering, without paying anyone for transit. Smaller providers pay them to carry their traffic further.

Most of the time you never think about it, but it shapes your experience. Submarine cables are part of the backbone, so when one is cut, whole regions can slow down. Its capacity grows every year to keep up with video and cloud traffic, and because routes are redundant, traffic usually finds another way around a failure, sometimes with extra latency.

## An analogy

The highway system of a country. Your street leads to an avenue, the avenue to a regional road, and long trips run on a few big highways run by different companies that agree to connect at interchanges.

## Keep in mind

- The core long-distance links that carry traffic between big networks.
- Owned by many companies, not one; they meet at exchange points.
- Tier 1 networks reach the whole internet by peering, without paying for transit.
- Submarine cables are part of it; redundancy routes around most failures.

## Go deeper

- [Internet backbone on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_backbone)
- [Tier 1 network on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network)

## Related terms

- [Internet](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/internet/): A worldwide network of networks that lets any connected device reach any other.
- [Internet exchange point](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/internet-exchange-point/): A place where many internet networks plug into each other to swap traffic directly.
- [Data center](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/data-center/): A building full of servers where the internet, the cloud and AI actually run.
- [Submarine cables](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/submarine-cables/): Cables on the ocean floor that carry almost all the internet traffic between continents.
- [Regions and Availability Zones](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/regions-and-availability-zones/): Where AWS physically lives: cities worldwide, each split into separate data centers.
- [Cloud computing](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/cloud-computing/): Renting computers over the internet instead of buying your own.
- [Bandwidth and latency](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/bandwidth-and-latency/): How much data fits per second, and how long each trip takes. Two different things.