It’s my understanding that when a computer or a server needs to connect to another server connected to the internet, a ‘handshake’ needs to be performed so that they can share data, but how are two servers able to communicate without broadcasting all of their data to every other server connected to the internet as well?
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Each server has an address on the network.
Each computer on the network has a list that says “if I get data meant for computer X, send it on to computer Y”. This list is called a “routing table”.
What’s more, the addresses are, like normal human addresses, broken into parts. So if the server is at [53.38.60.1](https://53.38.60.1), my computer doesn’t need to have the full routing table for the whole internet, it’s enough to know “right, anything starting with 53. gets sent in *that* direction.”, just like your local postal service doesn’t have to know where “P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney” is, they can just look at the “Sydney” part and say “right, that gets sent to the sorting centre at Los Angeles Airport.”
Yes, *some* computers besides the server get to see the message (which is why connecting to websites via https, rather than http, is important), but only about a few dozen instead of billions.
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