A funny thing happened on the way to Utah...

[Dave Gillespie]

I just had an interesting experience on the Internet.  Can anyone explain
the following story?

I'd been talking on and off with a person at mua.usu.edu in Utah using
the "talk" command.  I was on csvax.caltech.edu, a 4.2BSD machine.
Each time I got the "connection requested by xxx at mua.usu.edu" message
I typed the talk command to reply.  So far, so good.

At eight minutes to midnight I get another talk request, and respond as
usual.  He says hi, I say hi, he says "what do you need", and I say
"what do YOU need?".  Presently it develops that this is some totally
different person who has never heard of me or my machine!  Looking back
at the Talk_Daemon message I had copy/pasted I see he is at alcor.usc.edu,
which is a few miles away here in Southern California.

I ask, "are you sure you weren't trying to talk to me?"  He responds,
"no, I wasn't talking to anyone; I was just sitting here telnetting to
Utah."  Oh.  Sure enough, he was connected to mua.usu.edu.

My friend in Utah has logged off now, but I presume he tried to talk to
me and somehow his network software used this other guy's address instead
of its own address.  Or did the Internet link between Utah and California
bundle us together somehow?  Ideas, anyone?

								-- Dave

--
Dave Gillespie
  256-80 Caltech Pasadena CA USA 91125
  daveg at csvax.caltech.edu, ...!cit-vax!daveg