Hypernet
The Hypernet is a galactic network of hyperspace transport lanes between various star systems. Communications along the lines is instant over even vast distances, and travel along them is high-speed and very safe. (It can take weeks or months to travel between star systems with conventional FTL drives, but hyperspace lanes allow for such trips to be made in hours or days, instead.) Advanced manufactured goods, from technical components to medicines, are often shipped via Hypernet out to colony worlds, who usually ship back raw materials or other local commodities in exchange. The Hypernet is primarily controlled by the Galactic Explorers Alliance Starfleet (GEAS).
Setting up a new hyperspace lane requires installing a junction station, linking it to the main node in orbit around Maxima Ceres. Most starships can easily carry the equipment to do, but without an official sponsor the equipment to do so can be prohibitively expensive. This also allows for explorers to return home much more quickly than they left, making "ongoing" exploration possible, always pushing the boundaries farther. A ship can set up a transport node, traveling swiftly back to the central hub where they can resupply and enjoy a bit of leave, then take that new Hyperspace lane back out to the edges of space where they were before, resuming their previous journey with little time lost at all.
The ability to rapidly exchange information along the Hypernet makes it essential for long-range communication between colony worlds, and transfer rates are so fast that whole businesses thrive off of running data processing centers, where raw data is received, run through central computers the size of office buildings, and then piped back out to the colonies. This can save a poorer colony a great deal of money, since by outsourcing it means that they do not require extensive data centers of their own.