mcvax

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}
   {namespaces}.  It still exists in the {EARN}/{BITNET}
   namespace.

   [Posting by Daniel Karrenberg <[email protected]> to eunet.general].

   (1990-03-02)