| bang path 1. An old-style naming a sequence of hosts through which a message must pass to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee (a ""). So called because each is signified by a sign (exclamation mark). Thus, for example, the path ...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me directs people to route their mail to computer bigsite (presumably a well-known location accessible to everybody) and from there through the computer foovax to the account of user me on barbox. Before s became commonplace, people often published compound bang addresses using the convention (see ) to give paths from *several* big computers, in the hope that one's correspondent might be able to get mail to one of them reliably. e.g. ...!{seismo, ut-sally, ihnp4}!rice!beta!gamma!me Bang paths of 8 to 10 hops were not uncommon in 1981. Late-night dial-up UUCP links would cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as messages would often get lost. 2. A . (1998-05-06) |
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