Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!motcid!king
From: king@cell.mot.COM (Steven King)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: ...!got!me!here!too
Message-ID: <871@canary5.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jan 90 15:09:13 GMT
References: <8708@cbnewsm.ATT.COM>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Motorola Inc. - Cellular Infrastructure Div., Arlington Heights, IL 60004
Lines: 23

In article <8708@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> jeffj@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (jeffrey.n.jones,ca1028,) writes:
>I just noticed this for the first time and was wondering how it 
>works, ...!best!guess? Are the ... the where you put your machine
>of choice (att,uunet)? Or is cbnewsm smart enough to figure what goes
>there? 
>                       Jeff Jones

An address like "...!uunet!motcid!king" (to use my own .signature as an
example) generally means, "Take your favorite path to get to uunet, then
tack on !motcid!king as the best path to get from uunet to me."  In this case,
most every other mailer knows how to get to uunet so addressing mail to
just "uunet!motcid!king" will get it to me.  There may be the oddball mailer
that doesn't know where uunet is, so if you're at one of those sites you'll
need to figure out the at least part of the path yourself.  Say, you're
at the site "foo" which doesn't know anything about "uunet".  However, you
do know where "bar" is, and "bar" knows about "uunet", so address mail to
"bar!uunet!motcid!king".

-- 
---------------------------------------------------+---------------------------
If there's a byte of data in the computer but no   | Steve King  (708) 991-8056
pointer is pointing to it, then it isn't really    |   ...uunet!motcid!king
there.                                             |   ...ddsw1!palnet!stevek