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The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
(NSF) from 1985 to 1995 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States. The program created several nationwide backbone
computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...
s in support of these initiatives. Initially created to link researchers to the NSF-funded supercomputing centers, through further public funding and private industry partnerships it developed into a major part of the
Internet backbone The Internet backbone may be defined by the principal data routes between large, strategically interconnected computer networks and core routers of the Internet. These data routes are hosted by commercial, government, academic and other high- ...
. The National Science Foundation permitted only government agencies and universities to use the network until 1989 when the first commercial
Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise priva ...
emerged. By 1991, the NSF removed access restrictions and the commercial ISP business grew rapidly.


History

Following the deployment of the Computer Science Network (CSNET), a network that provided Internet services to academic
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
departments, in 1981, the U.S.
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
(NSF) aimed to create an academic research network facilitating access by researchers to the
supercomputing A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instruction ...
centers funded by NSF in the United States. In 1985, NSF began funding the creation of five new supercomputing centers: *
John von Neumann Center The John von Neumann Center (JVNC) was one of the five pioneering US supercomputer centers created by the National Science Foundation (NSF), established in 1985. The JVNC was the only national center to use the cryogenic ETA10 supercomputer. Named f ...
at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
* Cornell Theory Center at
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
*
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) is a high performance computing and networking center founded in 1986 and one of the original five NSF Supercomputing Centers.
(PSC), a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University, the
University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...
, and Westinghouse * National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Un ...
* San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) on the campus of the
University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is ...
(UCSD) Also in 1985, under the leadership of Dennis Jennings, the NSF established the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). NSFNET was to be a general-purpose research network, a hub to connect the five supercomputing centers along with the NSF-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to each other and to the regional research and education networks that would in turn connect campus networks. Using this three tier network architecture NSFNET would provide access between the supercomputer centers and other sites over the backbone network at no cost to the centers or to the regional networks using the open
TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the su ...
protocols initially deployed successfully on the
ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
.


56kbit/s backbone

The NSFNET initiated operations in 1986 using
TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the su ...
. Its six backbone sites were interconnected with leased 56- kbit/s links, built by a group including the University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications ( NCSA), Cornell University Theory Center,
University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 ma ...
, and Merit Network.
PDP-11/73 The PDP-11/73 (strictly speaking, the MicroPDP-11/73) was the third generation of the PDP-11 series of 16-bit minicomputers produced by Digital Equipment Corporation to use LSI processors. Introduced in 1983, this system used the DEC J-11 The J ...
minicomputers with routing and management software, called Fuzzballs, served as the network routers since they already implemented the TCP/IP standard. This original 56kbit/s backbone was overseen by the supercomputer centers themselves with the lead taken by Ed Krol at the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Un ...
. PDP-11/73 Fuzzball routers were configured and run by Hans-Werner Braun at the Merit NetworkThe Merit Network, Inc. is an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation governed by Michigan's public universities. Merit receives administrative services under an agreement with the
University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
.
and statistics were collected by
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
. Support for NSFNET end-users was provided by the NSF Network Service Center (NNSC), located at
BBN Technologies Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.) is an American research and development company, based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brow ...
and included publishing the softbound "Internet Manager's Phonebook" which listed the contact information for every issued domain name and IP address in 1990. Incidentally, Ed Krol also authored the ''
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet ''The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet'', by Ed Krol, was published in 1987 through funding by the National Science Foundation. It was the first popular user's guide to the history and use of the Internet. The title was a reference to the popula ...
'' to help users of the NSFNET understand its capabilities. The Hitchhiker's Guide became one of the first help manuals for the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
. As regional networks grew the 56kbit/s NSFNET backbone experienced rapid increases in network traffic and became seriously congested. In June 1987 NSF issued a new solicitation to upgrade and expand NSFNET.


1.5Mbit/s (T-1) backbone

As a result of a November 1987 NSF award to the Merit Network, a networking consortium by public universities in
Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...
, the original 56kbit/s network was expanded to include 13 nodes interconnected at 1.5 Mbit/s ( T-1) by July 1988. Additional links were added to form a multi-path network, and a node located in
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,7 ...
was added. Each of the backbone nodes was a router called the Nodal Switching System (NSS). The NSSes were a collection of multiple (typically nine) IBM RT PC systems connected by a Token Ring
local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a large ...
. The RT PCs ran AOS, IBM's version of Berkeley UNIX, and was dedicated to a particular packet processing task. Under its cooperative agreement with NSF the Merit Network was the lead organization in a partnership that included IBM, MCI, and the State of Michigan. Merit provided overall project coordination, network design and engineering, a Network Operations Center (NOC), and information services to assist the regional networks. IBM provided equipment, software development, installation, maintenance and operations support. MCI provided the T-1 data circuits at reduced rates. The state of Michigan provided funding for facilities and personnel. Eric M. Aupperle, Merit's President, was the NSFNET Project Director, and Hans-Werner Braun was Co-Principal Investigator. From 1987 to 1994, Merit organized a series of "Regional-Techs" meetings, where technical staff from the regional networks met to discuss operational issues of common concern with each other and the Merit engineering staff. During this period, but separate from its support for the NSFNET backbone, NSF funded: * the NSF Connections Program that helped colleges and universities obtain or upgrade connections to regional networks; * regional networks to obtain or upgrade equipment and data communications circuits; * the NNSC, and successor Network Information Services Manager (aka InterNIC) information help desks; * the International Connections Manager (ICM), a task performed by Sprint, that encouraged connections between the NSFNET backbone and international research and education networks; and * various ad hoc grants to organizations such as the Federation of American Research Networks (FARNET). The NSFNET became the principal Internet backbone starting in the Summer of 1986, when
MIDnet 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 regiona ...
, the first NSFNET regional backbone network became operational. By 1988, in addition to the five NSF supercomputer centers, NSFNET included connectivity to the regional networks BARRNet, JVNCNet, Merit/MichNet, MIDnet, NCAR, NorthWestNet, NYSERNet, SESQUINET, SURAnet, and Westnet, which in turn connected about 170 additional networks to the NSFNET.NSFNET – National Science Foundation Network
in the history section of th
''Living Internet''
/ref> Three new nodes were added as part of the upgrade to T-3: NEARNET in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Argone National Laboratory outside of Chicago; and SURAnet in Atlanta, Georgia."Retiring the NSFNET Backbone Service: Chronicling the End of an Era"
Susan R. Harris and Elise Gerich, ''ConneXions'', Vol. 10, No. 4, April 1996
NSFNET connected to other federal government networks including the NASA Science Internet, the Energy Science Network ( ESnet), and others. Connections were also established to international research and education networks starting in 1988 to Canada, France, the Netherlands, then to
NORDUnet NORDUnet is an international collaboration between the National research and education networks in the Nordic countries. Members The members of NORDUnet are: * SUNET of Sweden * UNINETT of Norway * FUNET of Finland * Forskningsnettet o ...
(serving Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), and later to many others. Two Federal Internet Exchanges (FIXes) were established in June 1989 under the auspices of the Federal Engineering Planning Group (FEPG). FIX East, at the
University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of ...
in College Park and FIX West, at the NASA Ames Research Center in
Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is t ...
. The existence of NSFNET and the FIXes allowed the
ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
to be phased out in mid-1990. Starting in August 1990 the NSFNET backbone supported the OSI Connectionless Network Protocol (CLNP) in addition to TCP/IP. However, CLNP usage remained low when compared to TCP/IP. Traffic on the network continued its rapid growth, doubling every seven months. Projections indicated that the T-1 backbone would become overloaded sometime in 1990. A critical routing technology, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), originated during this period of Internet history. BGP allowed routers on the NSFNET backbone to differentiate routes originally learned via multiple paths. Prior to BGP, interconnection between IP network was inherently hierarchical, and careful planning was needed to avoid routing loops. BGP turned the Internet into a meshed topology, moving away from the centric architecture which the ARPANET emphasized.


45Mbit/s (T-3) backbone

During 1991, an upgraded backbone built with 45Mbit/s ( T-3) transmission circuits was deployed to interconnect 16 nodes. The routers on the upgraded backbone were IBM RS/6000 servers running AIX UNIX. Core nodes were located at MCI facilities with end nodes at the connected regional networks and supercomputing centers. Completed in November 1991, the transition from T-1 to T-3 did not go as smoothly as the previous transition from 56kbit/s DDS to 1.5 mbit/s T-1, as it took longer than planned. As a result, there was at times serious congestion on the overloaded T-1 backbone. Following the transition to T-3, portions of the T-1 backbone were left in place to act as a backup for the new T-3 backbone. In anticipation of the T-3 upgrade and the approaching end of the 5-year NSFNET cooperative agreement, in September 1990 Merit, IBM, and MCI formed Advanced Network and Services (ANS), a new non-profit corporation with a more broadly based Board of Directors than the Michigan-based Merit Network. Under its cooperative agreement with NSF, Merit remained ultimately responsible for the operation of NSFNET, but subcontracted much of the engineering and operations work to ANS. Both IBM and MCI made substantial new financial and other commitments to help support the new venture. Allan Weis left IBM to become ANS's first President and Managing Director.
Douglas Van Houweling Doug Van Houweling is a professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. He is best known for his contributions to the development and deployment of the Internet. For these accomplishments, he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fa ...
, former Chair of the Merit Network Board and Vice Provost for Information Technology at the
University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, was Chairman of the ANS Board of Directors. The new T-3 backbone was named ANSNet and provided the physical infrastructure used by Merit to deliver the NSFNET Backbone Service.


Regional networks

In addition to the five NSF supercomputer centers, NSFNET provided connectivity to eleven regional networks and through these networks to many smaller regional and campus networks. The NSFNET regional networks were: *BARRNet, the Bay Area Regional Research Network in
Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...
; * CERFnet, California Education and Research Federation Network in
San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United Stat ...
, serving California and Nevada; *CICNet, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation Network via the Merit Network in
Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all ...
and later as part of the T-3 upgrade via
Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research national laboratory operated by UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facility is located in Lemont, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and is the l ...
outside of
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
, serving the
Big Ten The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...
Universities and the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin; *JVNCNet, the John von Neumann National Supercomputer Center Network in
Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of w ...
, connected the universities that made up the Consortium for Scientific Computing as well as a few New Jersey Universities. There were 1.5Mbit/s (T-1) links to Princeton University, Rutgers University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, Yale University, The Institute for Advanced Study, Pennsylvania State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York University, The University of Colorado and The University of Arizona. * Merit/MichNet in
Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all ...
serving Michigan, formed in 1966, still in operation as of 2013;"Merit–Who, What, and Why, Part One: The Early Years, 1964-1983"
, Eric M. Aupperle, Merit Network, Inc., in ''Library Hi Tech'', vol. 16, No. 1 (1998)
*
MIDnet 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 regiona ...
in
Lincoln, Nebraska Lincoln is the capital city of the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Lancaster County. The city covers with a population of 292,657 in 2021. It is the second-most populous city in Nebraska and the 73rd-largest in the United ...
the first NSFNET regional backbone to become operational in the Summer of 1986, serving Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, later acquired by Global Internet, which was acquired by Verio, Inc.; * NEARNET, the New England Academic and Research Network in
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
, added as part of the upgrade to T-3, serving Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, established in late 1988, operated by BBN under contract to MIT, BBN assumed responsibility for NEARNET on 1 July 1993; *NorthWestNet in
Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...
, serving Alaska, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, and Washington, founded in 1987; * NYSERNet, New York State Education and Research Network in
Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named ...
; *SESQUINET, the Sesquicentennial Network in
Houston, Texas Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...
, founded during the 150th anniversary of the State of
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
; * SURAnet, the Southeastern Universities Research Association network in College Park, Maryland and later as part of the T-3 upgrade in
Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital city, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georgia, Fulton County, the mos ...
serving Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, sold to BBN in 1994; and *Westnet in
Salt Lake City, Utah Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, t ...
and
Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Colora ...
, serving Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.


Commercial traffic

The NSF's appropriations act authorized NSF to "foster and support the development and use of computer and other scientific and engineering methods and technologies, primarily for research and education in the sciences and engineering." This allowed NSF to support NSFNET and related networking initiatives, but only to the extent that that support was "''primarily for research and education in the sciences and engineering''." And this in turn was taken to mean that use of NSFNET for commercial purposes was ''not'' allowed.


Acceptable use policy

To ensure that NSF support was used appropriately, NSF developed the ''NSFNET Acceptable Use Policy'' (AUP) that outlined in broad terms the uses of NSFNET that were and were not allowed. The AUP was revised several times to make it clearer and to allow the broadest possible use of NSFNET, consistent with Congress' wishes as expressed in the appropriations act. A notable feature of the AUP is that it cites acceptable uses of the network that are not directly related to who or what type of organization is making that use. Use from for-profit organizations is acceptable when it is in support of open research and education. And some uses such as fundraising, advertising, public relations activities, extensive personal or private use, for-profit consulting, and all illegal activities are never acceptable, even when that use is by a non-profit college, university, K-12 school, or library. And while these AUP provisions seem quite reasonable, in specific cases they often proved difficult to interpret and enforce. NSF did not monitor the content of traffic that was sent over NSFNET or actively police the use of the network. And it did not require Merit or the regional networks to do so. NSF, Merit, and the regional networks did investigate possible cases of inappropriate use, when such use was brought to their attention.Management of NSFNET
a transcript of the March 12, 1992 hearing before the Subcommittee on Science of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, Second Session, Hon. Rick Boucher, subcommittee chairman, presiding
An example may help to illustrate the problem. Is it acceptable for a parent to exchange e-mail with a child enrolled at a college or university, if that exchange uses the NSFNET backbone? It would be acceptable, if the subject of the e-mail was the student's instruction or a research project. Even if the subject was not instruction or research, the e-mail still might be acceptable as private or personal business as long as the use was not extensive. The prohibition on commercial use of the NSFNET backboneEven after the appropriations act was amended in 1992 to give NSF more flexibility with regard to commercial traffic, NSF never felt that it could entirely do away with the AUP and its restrictions on commercial traffic, see the response to Recommendation 5 in NSF's response to the Inspector General's review (an April 19, 1993 memo from Frederick Bernthal, Acting Director, to Linda Sundro, Inspector General, that is included at the end o
Review of NSFNET
Office of the Inspector General, National Science Foundation, 23 March 1993)
meant that some organizations could not connect to the Internet via regional networks that were connected to the NSFNET backbone, while to be fully connected other organizations (or regional networks on their behalf), including some non-profit research and educational institutions, would need to obtain two connections, one to an NSFNET attached regional network and one to a non-NSFNET attached network provider. In either case the situation was confusing and inefficient. It prevented economies of scale, increased costs, or both. And this slowed the growth of the Internet and its adoption by new classes of users, something no one was happy about. In 1988, Vint Cerf, then at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), proposed to the
Federal Networking Council Informally established in the early 1990s, the Federal Networking Council (FNC) was later chartered by the US National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Computing, Information and Communications (CCIC) to continue to act as a forum for ...
(FNC) and to MCI to interconnect the commercial MCI Mail system to NSFNET. MCI provided funding and FNC provided permission and in the summer of 1989, this linkage was made. In effect, the FNC permitted experimental use of the NSFNET backbone to carry commercial email traffic into and out of the NSFNET. Other email providers such as Telenet's Telemail, Tymnet's OnTyme and CompuServe also obtained permission to establish experimental gateways for the same purpose at about the same time. The interesting side effect of these links to NSFNET was that the users of the heretofore disconnected commercial email services were able to exchange email with one another via the Internet. Coincidentally, three commercial Internet service providers emerged in the same general time period: AlterNet (built by UUNET), PSINet and CERFnet.


Commercial ISPs, ANS CO+RE, and the CIX

During the period when NSFNET was being established, Internet service providers that allowed commercial traffic began to emerge, such as Alternet, PSINet, CERFNet, and others. The commercial networks in many cases were interconnected to the NSFNET and routed traffic over the NSFNET nominally accordingly to the NSFNET acceptable use policy Additionally, these early commercial networks often directly interconnected with each other as well as, on a limited basis, with some of the regional Internet networks. In 1991, the Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX, pronounced "kicks") was created by PSINet, UUNET and CERFnet to provide a location at which multiple networks could exchange traffic free from traffic-based settlements and restrictions imposed by an acceptable use policy. In 1991 a new ISP, ANS CO+RE (commercial plus research), raised concerns and unique questions regarding commercial and non-commercial interoperability policies. ANS CO+RE was the for-profit subsidiary of the non-profit Advanced Network and Services (ANS) that had been created earlier by the NSFNET partners, Merit, IBM, and MCI.Review of NSFNET
Office of the Inspector General, National Science Foundation, 23 March 1993
ANS CO+RE was created specifically to allow commercial traffic on ANSNet without jeopardizing its parent's non-profit status or violating any tax laws. The NSFNET Backbone Service and ANS CO+RE both used and shared the common ANSNet infrastructure. NSF agreed to allow ANS CO+RE to carry commercial traffic subject to several conditions: * that the NSFNET Backbone Service was not diminished; * that ANS CO+RE recovered at least the average cost of the commercial traffic traversing the network; and * that any excess revenues recovered above the cost of carrying the commercial traffic would be placed into an infrastructure pool to be distributed by an allocation committee broadly representative of the networking community to enhance and extend national and regional networking infrastructure and support. For a time ANS CO+RE refused to connect to the CIX and the CIX refused to purchase a connection to ANS CO+RE. In May 1992
Mitch Kapor Mitchell David Kapor ( ; born November 1, 1950) is an American entrepreneur best known for his work as an application developer in the early days of the personal computer software industry, later founding Lotus, where he was instrumental in deve ...
and Al Weis forged an agreement where ANS would connect to the CIX as a "trial" with the ability to disconnect at a moment's notice and without the need to join the CIX as a member. This compromise resolved things for a time, but later the CIX started to block access from regional networks that had not paid the $10,000 fee to become members of the CIX. Meanwhile, Congress passed its Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act of 1992 that formally permitted NSF to connect to commercial networks in support of research and education.


An unfortunate state of affairs

The creation of ANS CO+RE and its initial refusal to connect to the CIX was one of the factors that lead to the controversy described later in this article. Other issues had to do with: * differences in the cultures of the non-profit research and education community and the for-profit community with ANS trying to be a member of both camps and not being fully accepted by either; * differences of opinion about the best approach to take to open the Internet to commercial use and to maintain and encourage a fully interconnected Internet; and * differences of opinion about the correct type and level of involvement in Internet networking initiatives by the public and the private sectors. For a time this state of affairs kept the networking community as a whole from fully implementing the vision for the Internet as a worldwide network of fully interconnected TCP/IP networks allowing any connected site to communicate with any other connected site. These issues would not be fully resolved until a new network architecture was developed and the NSFNET Backbone Service was turned off in 1995.


Privatization and a new network architecture

The NSFNET Backbone Service was primarily used by academic and educational entities, and was a transitional network bridging the era of the
ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
and
CSNET 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 d ...
into the modern
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
of today. With its success, the "federally-funded backbone" model gave way to a vision of commercially operated networks operating together to which the users purchased access. On April 30, 1995, the NSFNET Backbone Service had been successfully transitioned to a new architecture and the NSFNET fiber optic backbone was decommissioned. At this point the NSFNET regional backbone networks were still central to the infrastructure of the expanding Internet, and there were still other NSFNET programs, but there was no longer a central NSFNET optical networking service. After the transition, network traffic was carried on the NSFNET fiber optic regional backbone networks and any of several commercial backbone networks, internetMCI, PSINet,
SprintLink Sprint Corporation was an American telecommunications company. Before it merged with T-Mobile US on April 1, 2020, it was the fourth-largest mobile network operator in the United States, serving 54.3 million customers as of June 30, 2019. The c ...
, ANSNet, and others. Traffic between networks was exchanged at four Network Access Points or NAPs. Competitively established, and initially funded by NSF, the NAPs were located in New York (actually New Jersey), Washington, D.C., Chicago, and San Jose and run by Sprint, MFS Datanet, Ameritech, and Pacific Bell. The NAPs were the forerunners of modern Internet exchange points. The NSFNET regional backbone networks could connect to any of their newer peer commercial backbone networks or directly to the NAPs, but in either case they would need to pay for their own connection infrastructure. NSF provided some funding for the NAPs and interim funding to help the regional networks make the transition, but did not fund the new commercial backbone networks directly. To help ensure the stability of the Internet during and immediately after the transition from NSFNET, NSF conducted a solicitation to select a Routing Arbiter (RA) and ultimately made a joint award to the Merit Network and USC's Information Science Institute to act as the RA. To continue its promotion of advanced networking technology the NSF conducted a solicitation to create a very high-speed Backbone Network Service ( vBNS) which, like NSFNET before it, would focus on providing service to the research and education community. MCI won this award and created a 155Mbit/s ( OC3c) and later a 622Mbit/s ( OC12c) and 2.5 Gbit/s ( OC48c) ATM network to carry TCP/IP traffic primarily between the supercomputing centers and their users. NSF support was available to organizations that could demonstrate a need for very high speed networking capabilities and wished to connect to the vBNS or to the
Abilene Network Abilene Network was a high-performance backbone network created by the Internet2 community in the late 1990s. In 2007 the Abilene Network was retired and the upgraded network became known as the "Internet2 Network". History One of the aims of the ...
, the high speed network operated by the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (
UCAID Internet2 is a not-for-profit United States computer networking consortium led by members from the research and education communities, industry, and government. The Internet2 consortium administrative headquarters are located in Ann Arbor, M ...
, aka Internet2). At the February 1994 regional techs meeting in San Diego, the group revised its charter to include a broader base of network service providers, and subsequently adopted
North American Network Operators' Group The North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) is an educational and operational forum for the coordination and dissemination of technical information related to backbone/enterprise networking technologies and operational practices. It runs ...
(NANOG) as its new name.
Elise Gerich Elise or Elyse may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Elise, the unidentified person to whom Beethoven dedicated ''Für Elise'' * ''Elise'', a 1979 speculative fiction novel by Ken Grimwood * ''Élise ou la vraie vie'' (''Elise, or the Real Life' ...
and Mark Knopper were the founders of NANOG and its first coordinators, followed by Bill Norton, Craig Labovitz, and Susan Harris.


Controversy

For much of the period from 1987 to 1995, following the opening up of the Internet through NSFNET and in particular after the creation of the for-profit ANS CO+RE in May 1991, some Internet stakeholders were concerned over the effects of privatization and the manner in which ANS, IBM, and MCI received a perceived competitive advantage in leveraging federal research money to gain ground in fields in which other companies allegedly were more competitive. ''The Cook Report on the Internet'', which still exists, evolved as one of its largest critics. Other writers, such as Chetly Zarko, a University of Michigan alumnus and freelance investigative writer, offered their own critiques. On March 12, 1992 the Subcommittee on Science of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, held a hearing to review the management of NSFNET. Witnesses at the hearing were asked to focus on the agreement(s) that NSF put in place for the operation of the NSFNET backbone, the foundation's plan for recompetition of those agreements, and to help the subcommittee explore whether the NSF's policies provided a level playing field for network service providers, ensured that the network was responsive to user needs, and provided for effective network management. The subcommittee heard from seven witnesses, asked them a number of questions, and received written statements from all seven as well as from three others. At the end of the hearing, speaking to the two witnesses from NSF, Dr. Nico Habermann, Assistant NSF Director for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE), and Dr. Stephen Wolff, Director of NSF's Division of Networking & Communications Research & Infrastructure (DNCRI), Representative Boucher, Chairman of the subcommittee, said:
… I think you should be very proud of what you have accomplished. Even those who have some constructive criticism of the way that the network is presently managed acknowledge at the outset that you have done a terrific job in accomplishing the goal of this NSFNET, and its user-ship is enormously up, its cost to the users has come down, and you certainly have our congratulations for that excellent success.
Subsequently, the subcommittee drafted legislation, becoming law on October 23, 1992, which authorized the National Science Foundation
… to foster and support access by the research and education communities to computer networks which may be used substantially for purposes in addition to research and education in the sciences and engineering, if the additional uses will tend to increase the overall capabilities of the networks to support such research and education activities (that is to say, commercial traffic).Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act of 1992
, Public Law No: 102-476, 43 U.S.C. 1862(g)
This legislation allowed, but did not require, NSF to repeal or modify its existing NSFNET Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) which restricted network use to activities in support of research and education. The hearing also led to a request from Rep. Boucher asking the NSF Inspector General to conduct a review of NSF's administration of NSFNET. The NSF Office of the Inspector General released its report on March 23, 1993. The report concluded by: * stating that " general we were favorably impressed with the NSFNET program and staff"; * finding no serious problems with the administration, management, and use of the NSFNET Backbone Service; * complimenting the NSFNET partners, saying that "the exchange of views among NSF, the NSFNET provider (Merit/ANS), and the users of NSFNET
ia a bulletin board system IA, Ia, or ia may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Ia'', an 1892 novelette by Arthur Quiller-Couch * "Iä", a fictional word in the works of H. P. Lovecraft * International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which also goes by ...
is truly remarkable in a program of the federal government"; and * making 17 "recommendations to correct certain deficiencies and strengthen the upcoming re-solicitation."


See also

* History of the Internet


References


External links


The Internet - the Launch of NSFNET
National Science Foundation
NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking, Final Report 1987-1995
Karen D. Frazer, Merit Network, Inc., 1995
NSF and the Birth of the Internet
National Science Foundation, December 2007
NSFNET notes, summary, photos, reflections, and a video
from Hans-Werner Braun, Co-Principal Investigator for the NSFNET Project at Merit Network, and later, Research Scientist at the
University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is ...
, and Adjunct Professor at San Diego State University
"Fool Us Once Shame on You—Fool Us Twice Shame on Us: What We Can Learn from the Privatizations of the Internet Backbone Network and the Domain Name System"
Jay P. Kesan and Rajiv C. Shah, ''Washington University Law Review'', Volume 79, Issue 1 (2001)
"The Rise of the Internet"
one o
IBM’s 100 Icons of Progress
by Stephen Grillo, February 11, 2011, highlights IBM's contribution to NSFNET as part of its celebration of IBM'
centennial yearMerit Network: A historyNSFNET Link Letter Archive
April 1988 (Vol. 1 No. 1) to July 1994 (Vol. 7 No. 1), text only, a web and FTP site provided by th
Finnish IT center for science

Full copies of volumes 4-7, 1991-1994
are also available from the Hathi Trust Digital Library
Reflection on NSFNet
{{Authority control History of the Internet Internet architecture National research and education networks National Science Foundation