Systems Network Architecture (SNA) is the set of structural concepts and operational protocols underlying IBM's Advanced Function for Communications and the products supporting it. All functions required to transfer the data from one end user to another are supplied by the communication system components known collectively as the transmission subsystem. These components include data links, cluster controllers, communications controllers, components in individual terminals, and most of the functions in the host access method. The end user specifies what is to be sent and what are the parameters of transmission and is freed from further concern with the details of transmission. This paper examines the structure and the operation of the SNA transmission subsystem, particularly the routing of data through the network.