By placing servers and routers directly on the FDDI backbone, and connecting hubs to the routers, the backbone is less congested with traffic and work groups receive responses more rapidly. Adding a Collapsed Backbone A collapsed router backbone takes advantage of routers with a high-speed backplane, which allows packets to travel at 2 gigabits per second. This alternative is suited for networks which frequently engaged in traffic within individual LANS and the need for access to connected LANs is somewhat limited. Broadcast messages may be limited by controlling which network addresses are broadcast. By eliminating the propagation of broadcast packets, the router is able to relieve some of the network congestion.
Routers are extremely useful when many pathways exist through various networks.
The path the packets take between routers is customarily determined by internetwork traffic. If the traffic is extremely busy on one path, the router will select another. A router is able to connect 2 or more networks with no degradation of data. There is no limit to the number of routers data can past through because each router regenerates the data. A router can support a variety of communication protocol.