Where does Bandwidth come from?

ok take for instance were do virgin get there bandwidth from and were does that company who supply virgin gets theres from just been bugging me theses past few days

[SMHarman]

Trees?

Internally it is how the network is built out, more cable, better use of cable.

Externally it is bought.

[Stuart W]

The Internet backbone is made up of many large networks which interconnect with each other. These large networks are known as Network Service Providers or NSPs. Some of the large NSPs are UUNet, CerfNet, IBM, BBN Planet, SprintNet, PSINet, as well as others. These networks peer with each other to exchange packet traffic. Each NSP is required to connect to three Network Access Points or NAPs. At the NAPs, packet traffic may jump from one NSP's backbone to another NSP's backbone. NSPs also interconnect at Metropolitan Area Exchanges or MAEs. MAEs serve the same purpose as the NAPs but are privately owned. NAPs were the original Internet interconnect points. Both NAPs and MAEs are referred to as Internet Exchange Points or IXs. NSPs also sell bandwidth to smaller networks, such as ISPs and smaller bandwidth providers.

Taken from HERE

So, the internet 'back bone' is made up of a few networks with massive transit (bandwidth). NSP's are connected to one of these networks.

The simple (but not overly accurate) explanation is that ISP's get their 'bandwidth' from NSP's. NSP's get their bandwidth from the core internet itself.

It gets complicated because this is all done at Layer2 (packet layer) rather than Layer3 (IP) which we all recognise.

great post stu but man I am now confused lol

[jsb1973]

Originally Posted by jona_b

ok take for instance were do virgin get there bandwidth from and were does that company who supply virgin gets theres from just been bugging me theses past few days

Hi Jona,
In terms of "bandwidth"; Virgin Media runs its own MPLS/IP network run over a mostly VM owned fibre network that spans the UK & Ireland. The group which I work in supply physical layer connectivity to our own data group and also other operators.

In terms of accessing the internet, as has been previously stated in depth, we peer with other operators at sites such as LINX (London Internet Exchange) to exchange layer 2 packets.

If you have any questions, just let me know.

cheers
jsb

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by jsb1973

Hi Jona,
In terms of "bandwidth"; Virgin Media runs its own MPLS/IP network run over a mostly VM owned fibre network that spans the UK & Ireland. The group which I work in supply physical layer connectivity to our own data group and also other operators.

In English: Virgin own most of the hardware that provides bandwidth to VM customers. For connections to parts of the internet NOT on VM's network, they buy in bandwidth from other suppliers,