Sounds like bang-path routing from the good-old-days of UUCP. Ian On 2013-01-07, at 11:41 AM, "Steve Davidson" <jeep at scshome.net> wrote: When DEC began to run out of node names/addresses (64512) they resorted to something called hidden areas. "Spitbrook Rd" (Nashua, NH) had nodes that were in areas 61-63 that could not be seen beyond that facility. Other sites, like the "The Mill" and "Parker Street" (Maynard, MA) also reused those same addresses just not the node names. If the node you were on was in a hidden area then you had to do your own "routing" of sorts to get the areas outside your facility. As an example: If I was on node FOO::, and FOO:: was in a hidden area, and I wanted to send email to another site on node BAR:: then the DECnet path might look something like this: ROUTR1::BAR::<username>. Where ROUTR1:: is a non-hidden area node within my facility. If the other end had the same issue then the chosen path might look something like: ROUTR2::FOO::DAVIDSON. Where ROUTR2:: is a non-hidden area node within the source facility. This was referred to as PMR (Poor Mans Routing). The concept was not new because it had been used in previous versions of DECnet anyway, the application was... Sort of... HECnet has reserved area 63 for hidden area nodes - to play with mostly. I did some playing around last year. If I can ever find my notes (from DEC days) about the whole setup I will get back to playing some more with it.