The Backbone s Connected to Everything Else

The Backbone's Connected to Everything Else!

As mentioned in this chapter, 10Base5 and Gigabit Ethernet are both well suited for network backbones. If networks have backbones, do they also have hip bones and tailbones? How about it?

In networking, the backbone is a particular cable segment that connects other cable segments or that provides a high-speed link to accommodate high-volume network traffic on cable segments where large quantities of traffic aggregate. If you think about this situation for a minute and take a quick look at Figure 7-5, you should begin to understand that saying "a cable segment that connects other cable segments" and "a cable segment where large quantities of traffic aggregate" are two ways of saying the same thing.

Figure 7-5: A backbone ties together all the pieces of a network.

Simply put, a backbone provides a link to tie together many other cables. As the demand for network bandwidth goes up for individual users, the amount of traffic that backbones must carry increases accordingly . Backbones also often provide links to outside resources, such as the Internet, or access to massive centralized data collections, such as mainframe databases and their ilk.