page_title: UUCP
section_title: Mail routing
hierarchical_section_title: UUCP / Mail routing
caption_attribution_description: An email address before the Domain Name System provided .COM, .EDU, .GOV and similar addresses. The address "uw-beaver!teltone!dataio!holley" used the Unix-to-Unix copy program ( UUCP). The University of Washington's UNIX computer named uw-beaver was an open mail relay with a known IP address. An incoming email was copied to uw-beaver then to a computer at Teltone (a nearby manufacturing company) and finally to a computer at Data I/O and Michael Holley's email file. Data I/O registered data-io.com and Teltone registered teltone.com on Nov 17, 1986 and were in the first 50 .COM addresses assigned.
context_page_description: UUCP is an acronym of Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers.
  A command named uucp is one of the programs in the suite; it provides a user interface for requesting file copy operations. The UUCP suite also includes uux, uucico, uustat, uuxqt, and uuname. Some versions of the suite include uuencode/uudecode.
  Although UUCP was originally developed on Unix in the 1970s and 1980s, and is most closely associated with Unix-like systems, UUCP implementations exist for several non-Unix-like operating systems, including DOS, OS/2, OpenVMS, AmigaOS, classic Mac OS, and even CP/M.
context_section_description: The uucp and uuxqt capabilities could be used to send email between machines, with suitable mail user interfaces and delivery agent programs.  A simple UUCP mail address was formed from the adjacent machine name, an exclamation mark (often pronounced bang), followed by the user name on the adjacent machine.  For example, the address barbox!user would refer to user user on adjacent machine barbox.
  Mail could furthermore be routed through the network, traversing any number of intermediate nodes before arriving at its destination.  Initially, this had to be done by specifying the complete path, with a list of intermediate host names separated by bangs.  For example, if machine barbox is not connected to the local machine, but it is known that barbox is connected to machine foovax which does communicate with the local machine, the appropriate address to send mail to would be foovax!barbox!user.
  User barbox!user would generally publish their UUCP email address in a form such as …!bigsite!foovax!barbox!user.  This directs people to route their mail to machine bigsite (presumably a well-known and well-connected machine accessible to everybody) and from there through the machine foovax to the account of user user on barbox. Publishing a full path would be pointless, because it would be different, depending on where the sender was. (e.g. Ann at one site may have to send via path gway!tcol!canty!uoh!bigsite!foovax!barbox!user, whereas from somewhere else, Bill has to send via the path pdp10!router22!bigsite!foovax!barbox!user). Many users would suggest multiple routes from various large well-known sites, providing even better and perhaps faster connection service from the mail sender.
caption: Business card with UUCP email address
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