Notes on  BACKBONE SITE 

Formerly, a key Usenet and email site, one that processes a large
amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home site of
any of the regional coordinators for the Usenet maps. Notable
backbone sites as of early 1993, when this sense of the term was
beginning to pass out of general use due to wide availability of
cheap Internet connections, included uunet and the mail machines at
Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western Research
Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of Texas.
Compare LEAF SITE.

[2001 update: This term has passed into history. The UUCP network
world that gave it meaning is gone; everyone is on the Internet now
and network traffic is distributed in very different patterns. Today
one might see references to a "backbone router" instead --ESR]

J3N Research Labs

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