bang path
1. <communications> An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address naming a
sequence of hosts through which a message must pass to get from some
assumed-reachable location to the addressee (a "source route"). So called
because each hop is signified by a bang 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 autorouting mailers became commonplace, people often published compound
bang addresses using the convention (see glob) 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. <operating system> A shebang.
(1998-05-06)
Nearby terms:
bandwidth « bang « bang on « bang path »
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