Mcvax

1 definition found

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  mcvax
       
          mcvax.cwi.nl used to be the international {backbone} node of
          {EUnet}, the European Unix network.  It was located in
          Amsterdam, Netherlands and belonged to "Centrum voor Wiskunde
          en Informatica" (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science)


          which is an institute belonging to a foundation called
          "Mathematisch Centrum".  Since the first mcvax was on of the
          first {VAXen} in Europe and one of it's first {uucp}
          connections was to a machine called decvax it was quickly
          christened mcvax.  Some also say this was done to give Jim
          McKie a nice mail address: mcvax!mckie.  But this is certainly
          not true at all.  The function of EUnet international backbone
          moved to another VAX later but the name moved with it, because
          in those days of mainly uucp based mail and before widespread
          use of {pathalias} it was simply not feasible to rename the
          machine to "europa" as was suggested at one stage.
       
          Mcsun (or relay.eu.net or net.eu.relay in some parts of
          Europe) replaced the international backbone host of EUnet
          around 1990.  This machine was donated by {Sun Microsystems}
          owned by the {European Unix Systems User Group} (EUUG).  It
          was located about 5m from where mcvax used to be and operated
          by the same people.
       
          Mcvax has finally ceased to exist in the {domain} and {uucp}
          {namespace}s.  It still exists in the {EARN}/{BITNET}
          namespace.
       
          [Posting by Daniel Karrenberg  to eunet.general].
       
          (1990-03-02)