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.
“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
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”
