[off-topic] old NSFNET regionals?

Wed May 28 00:15:07 UTC 1997

Tung-Hui Hu supposedly said:
> 
> 
>  Does anyone remember the NSF-sponsored regional networks? Can you fix 
>  this table--this is off the top of my head so I am missing a few networks.
> 
>  Name             Region           NOC was or is at          Now
> 
>  SURAnet          Southeast US     Univ MD                   BBN SER
>  NEARnet          Northeast US     MIT?                      BBN NER
>  PREPnet          Pennsylvania     PSC                       merged w/ CICnet
>  BARRnet          Bay Area         Stanford? Berkeley?       BBN WR
>  CERFnet?         South Calif      SDSC                      TCG
>  CICnet           Midwest          ?                         merged w/ PREPnet
>  Merit            Michigan         U Mich
>  JvNCnet          Middle states    Princeton                 bought by verio
>  NYSERnet         New York         ?
>  THEnet           Texas            U Texas
> 
>  Thanks,
> 
> -Tung-Hui Hu
> hhui at arcfour.com 
> 

I am sure many of us remember them all too well.  The original NSFnet
backbone consisted of 6 sites (each of the 5 supercomputer centers and
NCAR) which was about 85 or 86.  Then in 87 or 88 the network was
redesigned and upgrade to a T1 network.  The number of site rose to 13
including the 5 supercomputer centers, Merit, NCAR, BARRNet, MIDnet,
Westnet, NorthWestNet, SESQUINET, and SURAnet.  NYUSERNet and JVNCnet we
hooked in but were not officially part of the backbone. (they happened to
be headquartered at two of the supercomputer sites so they got lucky)
In 1990 or so the backbone was upgraded to T3's and NEARNET, Argonne
National Lab, and SURAnet were added to bring the net up to 16 nodes.

This was a brief history of where things were before the end of the NSFnet
in 1994 and the transition to the three NAP points.

See http://nic.merit.edu/nsfnet

for more infor than you probably want.

--->  Phil