How does TCP/IP work?
Many people believe since a lot of the Internet traffic flows over phone lines that all the information follows one path straight from the sender to the receiver immediately, just as a phone call works. That is called circuit switched delivery. But in fact, the Internet works more like the post office, moving information by different routes when a carrier is available to pick up and forward. This is called packet switched delivery. The only difference between the post office and the Internet is that the whole process may take less than a second to break, distribute, collect and reassemble a message whose parts may have gone through Texas and Japan on the way. Why do you suppose a straight connection from sender to receiver is not used on the Internet? The answer is: much of the time when you are on the Internet, nothing is being transferred, such as when you are reading a page. It would be wasteful to tie up a line. You may also recall that one of the major reasons to build the Interne
