Originally written 1995-02-21

Reflections on a Bangpath

Or: How to Get from L.A. to San Diego via Australia

Wherein the author shows that the shortest path from San Diego to L.A. is via Australia and Ohio.

I saw this Path: field in Usenet post recently. I'll line-wrap it so it'll display OK...

Path: csun.edu!nic-nac.CSU.net!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!olivea
 !nntp.msstate.edu!emory!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu
 !uwm.edu!msunews!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au
 !ihnp4.ucsd.edu!network.ucsd.edu!nope.ucsd.edu!nfitch

Bangpaths, like Hebrew, are read right to left, but also from the bottom up. Let's start from the beginning.

nope.ucsd.edu!nfitch

Nfitch at UC San Diego posts it. It bounces around (ihnp4.ucsd.edu!network.ucsd.edu!nope.ucsd.edu), and then:

munnari.oz.au!ihnp4.ucsd.edu

It goes to Australia. Whee!

uwm.edu!msunews!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.oz.au

Then it goes over to Monash University (Aus), and then back to the US, to the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee via msunews, which I'm guessing is either Michigan State University (USA), Mankato State University (USA), or Moscow State University (Russia). From there:

howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu

It heads to south and east, to Ohio State. It quickly realizes its mistake, and heads to Reston, Virginia, and then to Georgia, to Emory

nntp.msstate.edu!emory

Georgia gets old, so it then heads back west again, to Mississippi State University

charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!olivea!nntp.msstate.edu

It then takes that famous Mississippi/Chico corridor, to Cal State Chico.

nic-nac.CSU.net!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu

It then arrives at the CSU systemwide newsserver.

csun.edu!nic-nac.CSU.net

And then it arrives at CSU Northridge's news server.

Think about it, won't you?

— sburke, Tue Feb 21 1995