Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index In general usage, the "backbone" is a synonym for the spine of an animal. In telecommunication, the term backbone has the following meanings: The high-traffic-density connectivity portion of any communications network. In packet-switched networks, a primary forward-direction path traced sequentially through two or more major relay or switching stations. In packet-switched networks, a backbone consists primarily of switches and interswitch trunks. Source: from Federal Standard 1037C and from MIL-STD-188 This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.