bang path

bang path n.  An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address
   specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the
   addressee, so called because each {hop} is signified by a
   {bang} sign.  Thus, for example, the path
   ...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me directs people to route their mail
   to machine bigsite (presumably a well-known location accessible
   to everybody) and from there through the machine foovax to the
   account of user me on barbox.

   In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers
   became commonplace, people often published compound bang addresses
   using the { } convention (see {glob}) to give paths from
   *several* big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent
   might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example:
   ...!{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.  See {{Internet address}},
   {network, the}, and {sitename}.