NSFnet -- 20 Years of Internet Obscurity and Insight
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/07/01/2124239.shtml
NSFnet celebrates 20 years of Internet obscurity, inspiration
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29491
from above:
That was the email sent to users of the NSF’s fledgling NSFnet to
announce that the network's backbone had been upgraded to a “blazing
T-1 speed.” NSFnet was created by NSF a few years earlier in an attempt
to create a computer network similar to the Department of Defense's
ARPANET.
.... snip ...
NSF and the Birth of the Internet
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_re****ts/nsf-net/textonly/index.jsp
from above:
Hans-Werner Braun, former Principle Investigator for NSFNET at MERIT
Networks: "The original 56 kilobits-per-second NSFNET backbone using
Fuzzball-based LSI 11 nodes, became operational in mid-1986 between the
five new NSF supercomputer centers and the National Center for
Atmospheric Research. The rather open-access nature of the NSFNNET -- a
new routing paradigm -- constituted a challenge for the Internet, which
until then was basically a hierarchical structure centered around the
ARPANET. With the NSFNET, there was suddenly multiple national backbones
with very different administration and modes of operations. In my
opinion, the NSFNET activities most certainly propelled the Internet out
of the U.S. Department of Defense research context, and paved the way
towards today’s global and very broad cyberinfrastructure.”
.... snip ...
and some old email from the period
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
and various posts mentioning the subject
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet
as referred to in the email, we had been working with NSF and various
participating organizations on T1 backbone. Already, as part of our HSDT
project
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt
we had T1 (and faster speed) links on the internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
and were looking to do something similar for NSFNET. somewhere along the
way, internal politics got involved and we were prevented from directly
participating. the director of NSF sent a letter to CEO, hoping to fix
the situation ... even claiming what we already had running was at least
five yrs ahead of all NSFNET bid submissions. however that just seemed
to aggrevate the internal politics. however, we believe our
participation contributed to the NSFNET RFP specifying requirement for
T1 links.
Note that the winning bid did not actually provide T1 links ... but just
sup****ted 440kbit links. possibly somewhat to meet the letter of the
RFP, T1 trunks were installed with telco multiplexors that ran multiple
440kbit links over T1 trunks. We somewhat facetiously noted that some of
those T1 trunks were likely, in turn, multiplexed over higher speed
telco trunks ... possibly even T5 trunks ... so one might claim that
NSFNET backbone was T5 operation (not just T1 operation).
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