your conflating various parts of the internet. the internet is the old school usa based network of networks. The WWW world wide web took that global but the “phone number directory” that lets you type in google and get to their WWW page is still in the USA internet hands (ICANN). Cloud was an online storage backup service, think a network connected ironmountain. With the development of the internet of things (your car, stove and thermostat will be “online” the cloud is moving from storage to SAAS or software as a service. Think of this as the morphing of a computer to a chromebook. you basically can’t use a chromebook unless your online.
Now all internet data is packeted. thus if you want a visual reference its like droplets from a faucet. the overall speed is dependent on the size of the pipe and the pressure of the data. Even fiber optics which may morph some day into a constant data transmission system is today sending discrete data packets. The only non packeted data transmission systems are old school radio waves and twisted copper phone(1960’s like stuff) (caveat there are some laser transmission systems that are time or distance measuring that are still analog)
Hope this helps
Your explanation does help. Thanks. I would be either blankly stared at or openly laughed out of Best Buy if I asked one of their Geek Squad anything like this question. Sort of like driving an automatic car, and knowing absolutely about what transpires under the mysterious metal hood.