In this example, the postal service provides logical communication between the
two houses—the postal service moves mail from house to house, not from person to
person. On the other hand, Ann and Bill provide logical communication among the
cousins—Ann and Bill pick up mail from, and deliver mail to, their brothers and sisters. Note that from the cousins’ perspective, Ann and Bill are the mail service, even
though Ann and Bill are only a part (the end-system part) of the end-to-end delivery
process. This household example serves as a nice analogy for explaining how the
transport layer relates to the network layer: