---
description: Imagine your request is a letter you are trying to send to a friend across the country. Instead of going through the slow, traditional postal service, Cloudflare acts as a hyper-efficient courier company with a fleet of delivery hubs all over the world.
title: "Life of a Request: The First Hop - Into the Smart Network"
image: https://developers.cloudflare.com/og-docs.png
---

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Imagine your request is a letter you are trying to send to a friend across the country. Instead of going through the slow, traditional postal service, Cloudflare acts as a hyper-efficient courier company with a fleet of delivery hubs all over the world.

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