Travel by Network

Many ask how data travels across the network (or is it just me?).

It begins with data transmission -the physical transfer of data over communication channel or medium such as copper wires, optical fibers, and wireless channel and storage devices.

Data are represented as electromagnetic signals such as an electrical voltage, radio wave, microwave or infrared signal.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/137775.html says that:

“At its simplest conceptually, the Internet is much like the postal system

It is simply a way to connect one location to another location so that information can be sent back and forth between those locations. In the postal system, this is accomplished primarily with human mail carriers, trucks, and airplanes/ships/trains. Each deliverable postal location is designated by a unique address made up of a number, street name (a post office box number may substitute for those two items), a city, a state (or province or other such designation, depending on the country), and a country (often with something along the lines of a zip code to streamline the process).

The Internet likewise connects individual computers ("nodes") together by assigning each such location a unique address called an IP (Internet Protocol) Address. And, like the postal service, each data "packet" sent over the system will typically make a number of stops along the way (at Internet nodes) where it is analyzed, sorted, and sent further on its journey. This dynamic routing along the data path is necessary to balance traffic loads (telephone lines can get overloaded) and to bypass hardware malfunctions which may from time-to-time disable parts of the network.

There are a number of sources offering greater detail about how this all works. You have requested specificity and web page links to answer your question, so I'm providing three very good ones which will provide a high level view of data movement on the Net. This website has a very concise explanation of how phone lines are utilized by the Internet to connect billions of computers worldwide: http://www.gianace.com/dispensa/internet/internet.htm

Because it is essential to understand the Internet's addressing scheme in order to comprehend how data is exchanged on the Net, you may wish to look at these two Webopedia.com sites (then follow hyperlinks within them to examine as much detail as you find relevant) -"IP Address" at http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/I/IP_address.html and “Understanding IP Addressing" at http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/IPaddressing.asp

For a cool graphic representation of all the connections data may make going from one part of the world (in this example it's Florence, Italy) to another site, and how long the data "lingers" at each stop, go to this webpage and type in any site you want to see Florence connected to (try entering "google.com", for instance - when I tried this, it took 23 connections and 1,749 milliseconds to get data from the Italian site to Google):  http://www.visualroute.it/vr.asp”