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 National Science Foundation permitted only government agencies and universities to use the network until 1989 when the first commercial Internet service provider 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 departments, in 1981, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) aimed to create an academic research network facilitating access by researchers to the supercomputing centers funded by NSF in the United States. In 1985, NSF began funding the creation of five new supercomputing centers:
John von Neumann Center at Princeton University Cornell Theory Center at Cornell University Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Westinghouse National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) on the campus of the University of California, San Diego (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 protocols initially deployed successfully on the ARPANET.
56 kbit/s backbone
The NSFNET initiated operations in 1986 using TCP/IP. 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, and Merit Network. PDP-11/73 minicomputers with routing and management software, called Fuzzballs, served as the network routers since they already implemented the TCP/IP standard. This original 56 kbit/s backbone was overseen by the supercomputer centers themselves with the lead taken by Ed Krol at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. PDP-11/73 Fuzzball routers were configured and run by Hans-Werner Braun at the Merit Network and statistics were collected by Cornell University. Support for NSFNET end-users was provided by the NSF Network Service Center (NNSC), located at BBN Technologies 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 to help users of the NSFNET understand its capabilities. The Hitchhiker's Guide became one of the first help manuals for the Internet. As regional networks grew the 56 kbit/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.
1.5 Mbit/s (T-1) backbone IBM and MCI jointly won the NSF contract in November 1987, with a switching system from the former and digital network from the latter. That month, a report by the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology Committee on Computer Research and Applications proposed that scientific computer networks should provide 1.5 Mbit/s connections between 200 and 300 American research institutions by 1990. As a result of the award to Merit Network, a networking consortium by public universities in Michigan, the original 56 kbit/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 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. 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, Merit 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 the 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:
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
