Re: Maps or lists of early UUCP nodes/networks in the Boston area?

Thanks, Bill! Those are really fun to see! Great to see that someone is preserving this out there.

Thanks,
Dan


On May 11, 2026, at 4:37 PM, Bill Ricker <[email protected]> wrote:

While the tech/admin details in UUCP-MAP entries are valuable history (and someone has saved 1987-1992 on GitHub https://github.com/encse/uucp-map which extends the 1984 and 1985 entries available in netnews archives), there were also text-as-graphics logical, graphical maps of the network, usually described as "Usenet maps" (because they were more end-user oriented than the point-to-point transport & management details of UUCP-MAP, even tho' they described (usually) Mail, News, and File flows).

Two useful collections (there likely are more?) are

https://stargatemuseum.org/maps/

https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography/atlas/historical.html
(scroll or FIND past Arpanet maps to "USENET in 1981"

// bill in boston, this time NOT speaking for the Literary Estate of MAP

On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 3:52 PM Dan York via Internet-history <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Greg,

Thanks for the detective work! Comments inline…

On May 11, 2026, at 2:06 PM, Greg Skinner <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

I was able to find several entries for ’srbci’ with the Google Groups query https://groups.google.com/g/comp.mail.maps/search?q=srbci.

🤦‍♂️ Brilliant! Of course that would be a logical way to search!

From the looks of several of these entries, such as the following, ‘mv’ was a UUCP neighbor of ’srbci’.

Yes, my recollection is that it was our *only* neighbor. Everything we sent/received went through mv.

This part…

# Outgoing calls:
mv decvax(DIRECT+HIGH), ditka(EVENING+FAST), harvard(EVENING+FAST),
jjmhome(EVENING)
#
# Incoming calls:
mv balrog(DAILY),
contek(POLLED), <critz>(DIRECT+FAST), ctedge(DIRECT),
<eci>(DIRECT), <goldfnch>(WEEKLY), <helmers>(DIRECT),
<jlc>(DIRECT), lemuria(DIRECT+FAST), <loiosh>(DIRECT),
midnight(DAILY+FAST), <molly-bloom>(DIRECT),
<objects>(DAILY), <pondsquid>(DIRECT),
<pulsar>(DIRECT), <pophyn>(DIRECT), <rr>(WEEKLY/2),
<siia>(DIRECT), <srbci>(DIRECT),
<summa4>(DIRECT), <three>(WEEKLY+FAST),
<trashbin>(DIRECT), <vauto>(DIRECT), <verbal1>(DIRECT),
<virgin>(EVENING+FAST), <wgc386>(DIRECT), <wtfm>(DIRECT),
<zinn>(DIRECT)
#
# Misc reverse definitions:
harvard mv(EVENING)
decvax mv(DIRECT+HIGH)

… makes me think that perhaps my memory of the “mit” part of the bang-path may be faulty.  I might have had the “vax” part right but the owner wrong. Perhaps the address was “decvax!mv!srbci!ldy”.

'mit-vax' could have been an undocumented UUCP neighbor of ‘mv’.  It appears on USENET maps from the 1980s available by issuing a similar Google Groups query in net.news.map.

It could have been. It also could be a complete fabrication of my brain 30+ years later.

This conversation also reminds me that what I really should is simply reach out to Mark Mallett, who used to run MV Communications, and ask him! 💡I do have some contact info for him.

Many thanks, Greg!

Dan


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Bill Ricker
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