Although the explicit forwarding mechanism applies to any system that runs multiple instances of Anetd, the standard ABone configuration is used here to illustrate its operation. If a node has been properly configured for the ABone, it will have several Anetd processes, each running in a different OS account and acting in one of the following ABone roles: anpub, anee1 .. anee5, abocc. Of those, only one (by default, anpub) will listen on the well-known port 3322.
To send a command to a secondary Anetd running under a specific ABone account, the client can send the command to the primary and request, via the -f switch, that it be forwarded to the secondary. For example, to send a QUERY command to the secondary Anetd running as anee3, the client can issue the following command:
The primary Anetd will simply forward the packet to the Anetd running under the ABone role anee3, without checking its ACL, since it is acting as a forwarder. The anee3 Anetd will then check its ACL and act accordingly.