Explain · Like I'm five version
How the internet works in terms of the Royal Mail
Do you know how your computer talks to a computer far away?
The internet is just like the Royal Mail delivering letters to your friends. When you want to send a message, your computer breaks it into tiny pieces like postcards, each with an address on the back telling it where to go. A helpful little postman called a router looks at the address and sends your postcard to the next sorting office. If the first postman is busy, your card simply hops over to a different path to find a faster way home.
These postcards travel through thick cables buried under the sea and hidden under our streets. Just like your birthday card might change three trains before reaching your door, your digital message zips through many switches across the world in a blink. Once all the pieces arrive at the right house, your computer acts like a careful mummy and puts the postcards back together so you can see the whole picture or read your story.
Sometimes, a postcard gets lost or stuck behind a dusty shelf in a sorting office and never arrives at all. When that happens, your computer politely asks the sender to post a brand new copy of that missing card. It does this over and over again until your message is complete, safely sitting on your screen ready for you to enjoy.
Where the analogy breaks downThe Royal Mail does not physically break your letters into millions of tiny, independent scraps and then reassemble them at the destination.