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-
- From: "GATEWAY: The ARRL Packet-Radio Newsletter", Volume 6, Number 8
- January 5, 1990
-
- HIERARCHICAL ADDRESSING TIPS - written by Tom Clark, W3IWI
-
- More and more PBBSs are now supporting "H" Hierarchical addresses
- of the form K9DOG @ W3IWI.MD.USA. You can tell which PBBSs
- accept such addresses when you connect to them by looking at the
- SID (System ID). This is the field like [MBL-5.13-H$] or [RLI-
- 11.6-CH$] where the H indicates that the PBBS accepts the
- expanded addresses.
-
- Now for some "rules":
-
- 1. In the portion to the right of the "@" you still must supply
- a valid PBBS call sign if you use H addressing. Do not use H
- addressing for NTS messages (eg, ST 94321 @ NTSCA ) or for
- bulletins (eg, SB ALL @ MDCPBBS $). You don't have to use H
- addressing for well-known PBBSs.
-
- 2. The fields to the right of the @ which are separated by
- periods are intended to be real, physical locations. The
- convention that is being followed is to use the two-letter
- state/province postal abbreviation. Examples in the US and
- Canada include MD for Maryland, PQ for Quebec, MI for
- Michigan, WA for Washington state and DC for Washington, DC.
-
- Similar examples in foreign countries include MI for the
- Milano district of Italy and WA for the state of Western
- Australia.
-
- 3. This is followed by a three-letter country abbreviation
- following ISO standards (the same letter codes used during
- the Olympics). Examples are:
-
- Argentina ARG Italy ITA
- Australia AUS Japan JPN
- Austria AUT South Africa ZAF
- Brazil BRA Spain ESP
- Canada CAN Sweden SWE
- Chile CHL Switzerland CHE
- West Germany DEU England GBR
- Greece GRC United States USA
- Indonesia IDN USSR SUN
- Israel ISR
-
- 4. An optional continent code, like EU for Europe, NA for North
- America, AS for Asia, AU for Australia, may be added.
-
- 5. Addresses are assembled from left to right, smallest area to
- largest. Thus, my full address would be
- W3IWI@W3IWI.MD.USA.NA but for forwarding within this
- continent, W3IWI@W3IWI.MD or W3IWI.MD.USA would be adequate.
- From the examples given above, you must be careful of mail
- leaving the country since MI could be either Michigan or
- Milano. Thus I would need to address a message to my friend
- Luca in Milano as IW2ECL@I2KBD.MI.ITA or
- IW2ECL@I2KBD.MI.ITA.EU to avoid the message going to
- Michigan.
-
- 6. In some cases, you will see attempts to facilitate local
- distribution with an address like W6XYZ@N6VV.#NOCAL.CA.USA,
- where the #NOCAL may mean something in California, but is
- just passed through by PBBSs forwarding the mail out west.
- Such supplementary addresses are always preceded by a #.
- Don't try to be creative inventing new ones. A bad example
- is one user who invented the return address
- xxxxx@N4QQ.MDCPBBS.MD.USA.Z:21211 -- both the MDCPBBS and
- Z:21211 fields are bogus.
-
- 7. Don't use these addresses to try to force routing. A recent
- message sent to Washington state with the address
- xxxxx@WS7M.W3IWI played ping-pong for three days between the
- W3IWI and WB7DCH HF mail gateways.
-
- 8. The extended H address applies to the PBBS, not to the
- individual user. Thus, if K9DOG uses W3IWI, then his address
- is K9DOG@W3IWI.MD.USA, not K9DOG.MD.USA. The address for a
- Virginia user of WA3ZNW is N4PQR@WA3ZNW.MD.USA and not
- N4PQR@WA3ZNW.VA.USA since WA3ZNW is located in MD.
-
- 9. Remember you need to supply a correct address for mail. You
- should not worry about the route the mail takes. Don't try
- to force your mail to follow a particular path.
-
- 10. It is your responsibility to supply a good, clean, correct
- address and the packet-radio network will do its best to move
- the mail to its destination. Be careful about typographical
- errors. Here are some examples of what has happened: N0AN
- is not the same as NOAN (with the letter o). W1XYZ is not
- WIXYZ (with the letter i) nor is it WlXYZ (with a lower case
- L).
-
- from Tom Clark, W3IWI
-
-