Meaning – A backbone network is a central network to which smaller networks are connected. These smaller network are usually slower networks compared to the main backbone. The backbone network has a higher capacity that the networks it helps to interconnect, and is often regarded as a wide area network such as a public packet-switched datagram network.
The most common example of a backbone network setup , is the internet. This ultimate wide area network relies on a backbone network to transport data over a large distance. This is made possible by a series of ultra high bandwidth networks interconnected to various nodes across the world.
The Internet service providers are able to deliver high speed network to its users because they have a direct connection to the backbone network.
It can therefore be concluded that the stronger the backbone network, the better the reliability and faster the speeds that can be delivered to the end users.
Example of usage – “The fewer “hops” your data needs to make before reaching the backbone, the faster it will get sent to the destination.”