Thanks Andrew, I think I'm starting to understand. So let's say someone sends me a message, that message gets picked up by an i-gate and broadcast on the internet, and any i-gates that have recently heard my station will take that message and transmit it over RF? Is that correct?

Also, is there somewhere that I can read up on what the different entries in the destination column in the raw packet sniffer mean? For example, a recent entry from one of my location beacons shows a destination entry of "APRS<-W7BJH-1*". Does this mean that W7BJH-1 digipeated my packet? And what does the APRS mean in this instance?

Thanks again!