Networking & Connectivity

Underlying our applications are networks at scale – and bringing more people online to a faster internet.

Networking is fundamental to the large-scale, distributed systems that power the family of Facebook applications that are used by billions of people. Our Networking researchers focus on making innovative and scalable networking technology by rethinking traditional approaches and designs and collaborating with research and open source communities to develop an ecosystem of open hardware and software. We have developed and shared the details of numerous networking systems. This also includes applications of related disciplines such as machine learning, optimization and algorithmic theory, and formal verification to the networking domain.

Beyond our own infrastructure, Connectivity researchers at Facebook explore new wide area communication models and technologies in multiple domains, including lasers, terrestrial links, wireless networks and high-altitude platforms. Our experts aim to overcome technical challenges, invent new solutions and drastically change the economics of deploying wide-scale internet infrastructure. We work with researchers at universities, government labs and industry to quickly advance these new technologies to become viable solutions for operators and other partners to deploy. For our non-research activities, see the Facebook Connectivity website.