Grants were submitted to the National Science Foundation in the Spring of 1986, and in the Summer of 1986 NSF approved funding. In September 1987, MIDnet was the first NSFNET regional backbone network to become fully operational. The NSFNET regional backbone networks were the precursors to the Internet. [1] MIDnet initially connected Iowa State University, Kansas State University, Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, the University of Kansas, the University of Missouri, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Oklahoma, and Washington University in St. Louis with 56 kbit/s DDS leased telephone lines in a ring topology. The MIDnet ring was originally connected via a 56 kbit/s DDS leased telephone line from the Nebraska node to the NSFNET backbone. It was the first of the NSF-funded regional networks to become fully operational.
MIDnet transitioned from a university-based organization to non-profit status in 1992. Two years later, Global Internet, a Palo Alto, California start-up, acquired MIDnet and its name was changed to Global Internet Network Services. [2] The original board of directors of MIDnet were reorganized as the MIDnet Research and Higher Education Advisory Council. Global Internet sold the Network Services division to Verio, Inc. in 1997 and later sold the consulting and implementation division to Exodus Communications.[ citation needed ]
MIDnet, Inc. is now a private foundation with a focus on data research and development of information for the research and education networking community.[ citation needed ]
The history of the Internet has its origin in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.
Janet is a high-speed network for the UK research and education community provided by Jisc, a not-for-profit company set up to provide computing support for education. It serves 18 million users and is the busiest National Research and Education Network in Europe by volume of data carried. Previously, Janet was a private, UK-government funded organisation, which provided the JANET computer network and related collaborative services to UK research and education.
A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a computer network that interconnects users with computer resources in a geographic region of the size of a metropolitan area. The term MAN is applied to the interconnection of local area networks (LANs) in a city into a single larger network which may then also offer efficient connection to a wide area network. The term is also used to describe the interconnection of several LANs in a metropolitan area through the use of point-to-point connections between them.
The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1985 to 1995 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States. The program created several nationwide backbone computer networks in support of these initiatives. It was created to link researchers to the NSF-funded supercomputing centers. Later, with additional public funding and also with private industry partnerships, the network developed into a major part of the Internet backbone.
The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC), housed at Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall on the campus of Cornell University, is one of five original centers in the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program. It was formerly called the Cornell Theory Center.
Fuzzball routers were the first modern routers on the Internet. They were DEC PDP-11 computers loaded with the Fuzzball software written by David L. Mills. The name "Fuzzball" was the colloquialism for Mills's routing software. The software evolved from the Distributed Computer Network (DCN) that started at the University of Maryland in 1973. It acquired the nickname sometime after it was rewritten in 1977.
A leased line is a private telecommunications circuit between two or more locations provided according to a commercial contract. It is sometimes also known as a private circuit, and as a data line in the UK. Typically, leased lines are used by businesses to connect geographically distant offices.
The Computer Science Network (CSNET) was a computer network that began operation in 1981 in the United States. Its purpose was to extend networking benefits, for computer science departments at academic and research institutions that could not be directly connected to ARPANET, due to funding or authorization limitations. It played a significant role in spreading awareness of, and access to, national networking and was a major milestone on the path to development of the global Internet. CSNET was funded by the National Science Foundation for an initial three-year period from 1981 to 1984.
SURAnet was a pioneer in scientific computer networks and one of the regional backbone computer networks that made up the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). Many later Internet communications standards and protocols were developed by SURAnet.
The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California is a nonprofit corporation formed in 1997 to provide high-performance, high-bandwidth networking services to California universities and research institutions. Through this corporation, representatives from all of California's K-20 public education combine their networking resources toward the operation, deployment, and maintenance of the California Research and Education Network, or CalREN. Today, CalREN operates over 8,000 miles of fiber optic cable and serves more than 20 million users.
The Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) was an early interexchange point that allowed the free exchange of TCP/IP traffic, including commercial traffic, between ISPs. It was an important initial effort toward creating the commercial Internet that we know today.
The very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) came on line in April 1995 as part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored project to provide high-speed interconnection between NSF-sponsored supercomputing centers and select access points in the United States. The network was engineered and operated by MCI Telecommunications under a cooperative agreement with the NSF.
Stephen South Wolff is one of the many fathers of the Internet. He is mainly credited with turning the Internet from a government project into something that proved to have scholarly and commercial interest for the rest of the world. Dr. Wolff realized before most the potential in the Internet and began selling the idea that the Internet could have a profound effect on both the commercial and academic world.
Merit Network, Inc., is a nonprofit member-governed organization providing high-performance computer networking and related services to educational, government, health care, and nonprofit organizations, primarily in Michigan. Created in 1966, Merit operates the longest running regional computer network in the United States.
The Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet) is a state-funded IT organization that provides member organizations with intrastate networking, virtualization and cloud computing solutions, advanced videoconferencing, connections to regional and international research networks and the commodity Internet, colocation services and emergency web-hosting.
NEARnet was an innovative high-speed regional network for education, research and development, established in 1988 by a consortium led by Boston University, Harvard University, and MIT. It was a precursor to the commercial internet, formed after DARPA announced plans to dismantle the ARPANET. ARPANET then accounted for 71 of the consortium's 258 host connections.
Dennis M. Jennings is an Irish physicist, academic, Internet pioneer, and venture capitalist. In 1985–1986 he was responsible for three critical decisions that shaped the subsequent development of NSFNET, the network that became the Internet.
The European Academic and Research Network (EARN) was a computer network connecting universities and research institutions across Europe, and was connected in 1983 via transatlantic circuits and a gateway funded by IBM to BITNET, its peer in the United States.
Doug Gale was an early developer of the Internet. Gale earned a Ph.D. in physics from Kansas State University in 1972, and served as a tenured associate professor of physics at East Texas State University for eight years, during which time his research interests shifted to computer science.
ACOnet is the name of the national research and education network in Austria. The ACONET association promotes the development and use of that network. ACOnet is not managed and operated by ACONET, but by a unit in the Computing Centre of the University of Vienna that also operates the Vienna Internet Exchange. The University of Vienna represents ACOnet internationally, for example as a member of TERENA and as a participant in the project that funds the European backbone network GÉANT.