Re: there ain't no usenet "backbone"

There is a single site `backbone' now -- uunet -- which has a stated policy of passing all traffic. (Why not? They get paid by the minute.) It's still important for the thousands of UUCP sites, especially those that are in the boonies, far from local Internet nodes.

You have to remember that there are still not too many redundant connections between US and Europe, Australia and Japan. To some extent we ase still dependent on singular connection points (uunet/AlterNet/CIX etc.). Julf