Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!kl-cs!jonathan
From: jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk (Jonathan Knight)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Mailing to the UK
Message-ID: <401@kl-cs.UUCP>
Date: 11 Nov 88 09:37:39 GMT
References: <3f911c50.15831@gtephx.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Keele, Staffs. U.K.
Lines: 26

From article <3f911c50.15831@gtephx.UUCP>, by ngc@gtephx.UUCP (Chris Ng):
>> A safer way of expressing this would be:
>> 	...!ukc!uk.ac.ic.cc.vaxa!umeed04
>> 
>  I also tried to mail to my brother in U of Nottingham but so
> far without luck. He however, successfully sent me a piece of mail earlier on.
> 
> What is the ... in ...!ukc!uk.ac.kc.cc.vaxa!umeed04 meant?
>                    ^^^
> Shall I do this "mail asuvax!ukc!uk.ac.nott.vax!mvzmm" ?

The UUCP path is a list of machines seperated by !'s through
which the mail should travel.  The list is read from left to
right, with the string on the far right being the user id to
deliver the mail to.  The ... is used to say "work out how to
get to here and then use the rest of this path".  For us UK'ers ukc is
our gateway to the uucp world so we write ...!ukc at the start.  ukc
should be known to most of the world, so mailing ukc!uk.ac.nott.vax!mvzmm
should work.  If not try mcvax!ukc!uk.ac.nott.vax!mvzmm, and if that
doesn't work then ask a local expert what the path is to mcvax and concatenate
the two strings.
-- 
  _____      Jonathan Knight,               || JANET:  jonathan@uk.ac.keele.cs
    /        Department of Computer Science || UUCP:   ...!ukc!kl-cs!jonathan
   / _   __  University of Keele, Keele,    || BITNET: jonathan%cs.kl.ac.uk@
(_/ (_) / /  Staffordshire.  ST5 5BG.  U.K. || ----------------  cunyvm.bitnet