[lgierth]

> box1!box2!box3!userhandle

That's called Source Routing, and is what cjdns [1] does, although in a more federated and private manner. There's an OpenWRT firmware called meshbox [2] that works on the same devices as PirateBox (and more).

There's no apps shipped with it, but instead you get a secure, adhoc, near-zeroconf mesh network.

[1] https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns [2] https://github.com/SeattleMeshnet/meshbox

[lmz]

The bang path and "store and forward protocol" bit probably refers to mail routing in the UUCP days: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Mail_routing