From: mariasophia@comprehension.com   
      
   Jeff Barnett wrote:   
   >>> Can emails be sent within a network without using the internet?   
   >>   
   >> Do you remember in the early days of the net using backslash bang syntax?   
   >   
   > Virtually all large corporations have such capability. In fact the   
   > majority of corporate sent emails are inter office. N.B. Large   
   > corporations usually comprise many dispersed sites and email among them   
   > is often encrypted bundles sent every few seconds or minutes.   
      
      
   Yup. Others have confirmed what you said about internal mail not needing   
   the Internet. Long before SMTP and DNS were universal, sites moved mail   
   over UUCP links and routed it explicitly with "bang paths" such as:   
      
       host1!host2!host3!user   
      
   The backslash I distinctly remember (like host1\!host2\!user) was not part   
   of the addressing syntax itself. It was only needed when a local shell   
   treated "!" as a history operator and we had to escape it to keep the   
   shell from expanding it.   
      
       host1\!host2\!host3\!user   
      
   It probably even still works only on the small number of surviving UUCP   
   hobby nets where explicit routing is still used.   
      
   So yes, the method existed, and yes, it made internal or private-network   
   mail possible without the Internet, but it is essentially historical   
   today, but since we're all wizened old men, we remember the history.   
   --   
   On Usenet, wizened old men discuss topics of interest, where each adds   
   their own flavor of value so that the group, as a whole, benefits greatly.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)