What is a packet?
Channel: internet-class
Date: 2016-08-25

What is a packet?
The internet unites a lot of different computer networks. In many ways, those networks are free to do a lot of things their own way as long as they agree on a few things. But central the the idea of a modern computer network itself, and to all of the internet’s networks, in the idea of a packet. A packet is a single, fixed-size, indivisible unit of information. While Paul Baran and Donald Davies came up with the idea of dividing data into packets independently, Davies gets credit for the catchy name. (Baran called them message blocks or something equally less catchy.)

Credits: Talking: Geoffrey Challen (Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo). Producing: Greg Bunyea (Undergraduate, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo).

Part of the https://www.internet-class.org online internet course. A blue Systems Research Group (https://blue.cse.buffalo.edu) production.