backbone site
backbone site: n.,obs. 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 rib site, leaf site.
[1996 update: This term is seldom heard any more. The UUCP network
world that gave it meaning has nearly disappeared; 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]
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