Major Technologies used in Internet Backbone Networks
             The Internet consists of many networks strung together. The Internet's skeleton is made up of high-capacity trunk lines maintained by telephone companies at sites called Network Access Points that interconnect Internet Service Providers (ISPs) at regional nodes. The following terms need to be understood before we get into the details.
             Router: Links a local network to a remote network. For example, your company's network probably uses a router to connect to the Internet. Can be used to connect a LAN to a LAN, a WAN to a WAN, or a LAN to the Internet.
             Switch: A device to segment networks into different subnets. Segmenting the network into different subnets keeps one network from overloading with traffic.
             The different technologies involved in the Internet backbone network are:
             Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is a technology that has its history in the development of broadband ISDN in the 1970s and 1980s. ATM integrates the multiplexing and switching functions and is well suited for bursty traffic and allows communications between devices that operate at different speeds. ATM is designed for high-performance multimedia networking. ATM technology has been implemented in a very broad range of networking devices.
             The benefits of ATM are the following:
             · High performance via hardware switching
             · Dynamic bandwidth for bursty traffic
             · Class-of-service support for multimedia
             · Scalability in speed and network size
             · International standards compliance
             These refer to the extensive telephone lines that have already been in use for many years. The cables laid out are made of copper and hence these are referred to as copper based links. Since these links are already existent, optimum usage of them
             ...