News for and about the Internet2 community

[Greg Wood <>]

Contact:
Andy Rosenzweig

734-764-7146

Announcing A Celebration of the NSFNET: The Partnership That Changed  
the World

A significant building block in Internet history will be celebrated  
with a symposium and celebratory event on November 29-30 in  
Arlington, Virginia. Scientists, scholars, technologists, business  
leaders and educators will gather to celebrate the NSFNET, a program  
of networking projects funded by the National Science Foundation  
beginning in 1985.

The NSFNET comprised a set of projects that encouraged the adoption  
of internetworking in education and research. At the start of the  
program, networking was neither strongly standardized nor ubiquitous  
on campuses. The NSFNET program vastly expanded network availability,  
advanced technological development, and helped prove the value of the  
set of services that ultimately became today's commercial Internet.

The NSFNET backbone network connected colleges, universities and  
research centers throughout the U.S. and exchanged traffic with many  
overseas networks. The network grew from 56 kbps bandwidth in 1985 to  
T1 (1.5 Mbps) in 1988 and finally to T3 (45 Mbps) in 1991, reflecting  
the explosive growth in usage during this period. The T3 network was  
the immediate precursor to today's Internet, transitioning in 1995  
from a private network to an infrastructure connecting the resources  
of countless commercial network providers. At the same time, outreach  
initiatives helped early adopters in academia use the new resource  
for scientific and educational progress.

The theme of the November event, "The Partnership That Changed the  
World," points to the NSFNET's signature integration of public and  
private resources: a collaboration of academic, commercial and  
governmental institutions working toward a single goal. The sum of  
those efforts, greater than any organization could have achieved on  
its own, led to technical, operational and academic advancements that  
have had immense influence on modern life.

At the event, participants will discuss the NSFNET's history,  
celebrate its contributions, and consider the major impact the  
Internet has had on science, education, research and commerce. The  
program includes speakers and panelists who directed the NSFNET  
program, did research and scholarship across the network, and built  
services and businesses in the resulting network economy.

The November event is planned by a group of NSFNET program leaders,  
with organizational support from Merit Network and Internet2.  
Sponsors include Advanced Network & Services, Inc., Cisco Systems,  
IBM, Juniper Networks and the National Science Foundation. The event  
will be of particular interest to those who participated in NSFNET  
projects or conducted research and education that benefited from  
early advances in network services. There will also be a webcast of  
the event, available to the public.

The event will be held at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington,  
Virginia, It begins the morning of Thursday, November 29, with a  
formal program throughout the day and a gala reception and dinner  
following in the evening. The program resumes the morning of Friday,  
November 30, and concludes that afternoon.

More information about the event and about the NSFNET is available at  
the Web site:
www.nsfnet-legacy.org.