the NSFNET

THE NSFNET

The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation(NSF) beginning in 1985 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States.^[1] NSFNET was also the name given to several nationwide backbone networks that were constructed to support NSF's networking initiatives from 1985 to 1995. Initially created to link researchers to the nation's NSF-funded supercomputing centers, through further public funding and private industry partnerships it developed into a major part of theInternet backbone.

In 1985, NSF began funding the creation of five new supercomputing centers:

• John von Neumann Center at Princeton University
• San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) on the campus of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
• National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Cornell Theory Center at Cornell University
• Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, andWestinghouse

NSF's three tiered network architecture

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.