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How the internet reaches your house

Your connection is a chain of links owned by different companies, and the weakest or most expensive link decides what you get. Here's the chain, from your router to the rest of the world.

Your connection is a chain of links, usually owned by different companies, each with its own limits and its own price.

1 Your house router + Wi-Fi; modem or ONTwho: you own or rent the router 2 Last mile copper, coax or fibre to theprovider's office, cabinet or nodewho: the phone or cable company,even if another brand bills you 3 Local office + middle mile traffic combined onto backhaulwho: usually the incumbent,sometimes a regional carrier 4 Where networks meet transit (paid) or peeringwho: your provider's choice 5 Backbone long-haul fibre between citieswho: national andinternational carriers

A vertical chain of five links. 1, your house: the router and Wi-Fi, and a modem or optical network terminal; you own or rent the router. 2, the last mile: copper, coax or fibre to the provider's office, cabinet or node, owned by the phone or cable company even if another brand bills you. 3, the local office and middle mile, where traffic is combined onto backhaul: usually the incumbent, sometimes a regional carrier. 4, where networks meet, by paid transit or peering: your provider's choice. 5, the backbone, long-haul fibre between cities: national and international carriers.

Five links between your router and the rest of the internet, and who usually owns or decides each one. Illustration

Inside your house

Slow only on Wi-Fi? Fix the router before changing providers.

The last mile

The wire to the provider’s nearest equipment is one of three:

  • Copper phone pair (DSL): in southern Alberta, mostly TELUS, which the CRTC describes as the incumbent throughout most of Alberta and British Columbia.
  • Coaxial cable: the cable company’s: in most of the region Shaw, now Rogers, which completed its purchase of Shaw in April 2023.
  • Fibre: glass that carries light.
copper (DSL) office or cabinet speed drops past ~2 km coax (cable) node shared by every home on it fibre splitter office glass to the building

Three rows, one per wire. Top: a copper line runs from the phone company's office or cabinet to a home and fades along its length; past about two kilometres, speed drops sharply. Middle: one coax line runs from a neighbourhood node past several homes, each tapped off the same line, so they share it. Bottom: a fibre line runs from the provider's office through a splitter and on to the home.

Three last-mile wires. DSL runs copper from the phone company's office or a roadside cabinet, and its speed drops with distance. Cable runs coax from a neighbourhood node, shared by every home on it. Fibre runs glass all the way to the building, shared only at a splitter. Illustration

There’s one last-mile wire per home, dug or strung on poles: the expensive part, and usually the speed bottleneck. So in most Canadian towns only the phone and cable companies own one; the CRTC says they collectively sell internet services to more than 80% of homes across the country. Many smaller providers rent those lines under CRTC wholesale rules (what wholesale access means); in our view, two brands on one wire usually perform about the same. More in coax vs DSL vs fibre.

The middle mile

At the provider’s office, cabinet or hub, thousands of customers’ traffic is combined onto fibre to a bigger city: the middle mile, or backhaul. A town can have fibre to every house, but if the backhaul is thin or has only one path, everybody shares it, and everybody goes down when it’s cut: a community problem, not a household one.

One path out of town town: all offline fibre to every home cut city Two paths out town cut second path town stays online city

Two panels. Top, one path out: a town with fibre to every home has one backhaul line to the city; the line is cut, and the line and every home in town are shown faded, offline. Bottom, two paths out: the same town has two lines to the city; the straight one is cut and faded, and traffic runs over the second path instead, so the homes stay online.

The middle mile. With one path out of town, a single cut takes everyone offline, however good the fibre to each home. With a second path, traffic can take the other one. Illustration

Where networks meet

To reach anyone beyond its own customers, your provider hands traffic over:

  • Transit: it pays a bigger network to carry it, usually priced by capacity, per month.
  • Peering: two networks swap their customers’ traffic directly, usually unpaid, often at an internet exchange point (IXP), a neutral place where many networks plug into a shared switch.
rest of the internet transit, paid transit, paid in town exchange network A network B network C peering usually unpaid

Three networks in one town each run a link to a shared exchange in the middle and swap traffic with each other through it: peering, usually unpaid. Networks A and B also each have a separate paid transit link up to the rest of the internet.

At an exchange, networks in town trade their local traffic directly. Networks still pay for transit to reach the rest of the internet. Illustration

If the nearest handoff is in Calgary, traffic to a neighbour on another network can go to Calgary and back: see what an exchange is and why traffic detours.

The backbone

Long-haul fibre links cities and crosses the border. We haven’t found an open, public map of where Canada’s long-haul fibre crosses into the United States, which is one reason this site exists. The map shows what public sources document.

In our view, each link can be fixed separately: fibre in the ground, a second path out of town and a local place for networks to meet are all buildable.

Sources