🚀 go-pugleaf

Phil N. Schuman (pschuman@interserv.com) wrote:
: I recently ran across an E-mail naming construct that involved the 
: "bang - ! " character.

: I was wondering, did the Internet naming come about using the "at - @" 
: because of TCP/IP,
: and the "bang - !" is from the Unix UUCP world of exchanging E-mail ??
: Phil - 

Bang addressing preceded "internet style" addressing, certainly.  It was 
the only way to get mail out of the Triangle area for quite some time, 
even as USENET was developing there.  An address might have looked like:

acpub.duke.edu!mcnc!rutgers.edu!person@rotfl.ucb.edu

Which would basically have got the mail out the gateway to a backbone 
machine the local mail host knew, then from there to one that 
used/understood Internet style addressing, then to the internet address.  
Having Rutgers there was a real boon; the straight-through bang address 
would have been about 12 sites to many places, as I am sure it often was 
before internet addressing.

Internet addressing totally depends on TCP/IP addresses and TCP/IP savvy 
routers, MX records, and the like; or rather depends on a universal host 
ID scheme and routing scheme related to it.

I am unsure if the bang addresses were strictly the province of UUCP, though.

      -Mike
--
Michael Brian Scher   (MS683)   | Anthropologist, Attorney, Part-Time Guru
http://www.tezcat.com/~strange/ |          strange@cultural.com
strange@tezcat.com              |       mbscher@midway.uchicago.edu
   I'm a legal anthropologist; what's an illegal anthropologist?