How do hosts on the internet exchange traffic?

Question

Computer networks

At the university, I took a course on networks, read various articles, etc. but still can't figure out how hosts on the internet exchange traffic. If we imagine that the Internet is a large local network, then it turns out that the packet from host A to host B must be sent directly. And why then does the provider, together with the ip-address for my interface, issue the gateway address? Why won't a packet from 92.255.183.143 be sent to a direct host with address 8.8.8.8 ? If you run the tracing utility, then there will be 6-8 hops, that is, 6-8 routers, it turns out that the Internet is a lot of local networks separated by routers?

Answer 1

Internet is a lot of local area networks separated by routers?

Yeah. Read here
habrahabr.ru/post/186282

Answer 2

Patamushta directly the packet can be sent in one subnet, at the second level (channel) of the OSI model, on a poppy. But to transfer to another subnet, you need layer three, network, and a route to the desired host.