Figure 1 is an animation of a conversation taking place between two people.  This shows that in order for successful communication there needs to be a message, a transmitter, a medium in which to transmit the message, a receiver and a message destination.   The words that the person wants to tell the other is the message, the transmitter is the speaking person, the medium is the air carrying the voice, and the receiver is the ears of the person who is the receiver of the message. Figure 2 is an animation of a conversation taking place between two computers.  This shows that in order for successful communication there needs to be a message, a transmitter, a medium in which to transmit the message, a receiver and a message destination.   Here the message is a data packet being sent by the computers network card, which is the transmitter.  This data travels over network cables acting as the transmission medium and is received by the network card of the destination computer.