backbone cabal
= B =
backgammon
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.
[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]
--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.