edelheit@MITRE.ARPA (Jeff Edelheit) (05/17/85)
I am sure that I am not the only Arpa/Milnet user who doesn't fully understand
the structure of a Usenet address. I recognize that the "!" indicates the
path between two hosts, but what does {decvax,unc,hao,cbosgd,seismo,aplvax,uci}
mean? If anyone of those is the beginning of a path, how do we decided what
is the preferred route?
JeffWMartin@SIMTEL20.ARPA (William G. Martin) (05/21/85)
I've found that the best path from ARPA-land to USENET is to always
use host "seismo". If "seismo" is one of the choices given in a {} selection,
like {decvax,seismo,aplvax}!crash!bang!thud or the like, then use seismo,
and append "@seismo" on the end of the string. To send to the above fake
address, you'd send to "seismo!crash!bang!thud@seismo.ARPA" (your own mailer
will probably put that ".ARPA" on the end automatically).
If all you have is a string of exclamation-point addresses, like
zap!oof!bletch!crud
then again surround them with "seismo"s, like:
seismo!zap!oof!bletch!crud@seismo
in your "To:" field. This seems to work just about all the time...
Pragmatically, Will Martin
-------edelheit@MITRE.ARPA (Jeff Edelheit) (05/22/85)
Thanks for the suggestion. Jeff
darrelj@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Darrel VanBuer) (05/26/85)
The meaning of a usenet address (e.g. in my signature) with {a,b,c}!d!e is
that any of the sites a, b or c are "good" starting points, normally a
"well-known" backbone site within usenet. If you know how to get to one of
these, you have the last parts of the route, which can be the hardest to
learn otherwise (especially with the current rate of growth of number of
sites).
--
Darrel J. Van Buer, PhD
System Development Corp.
2500 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(213)820-4111 x5449
...{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,orstcs,sdcsvax,ucla-cs,akgua}
!sdcrdcf!darrelj
VANBUER@USC-ECL.ARPA