From: "Miguel A.L. Paraz" <map@iphil.net> Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 19:16:01 +0800 (HKT) Sender: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Rob Gutierrez wrote:
Does NSI (NASA Science Internet) qualify as one of those? Yeah, it was 1989 when it started (Hi Milo!), but ... :)
Not really. Both NSI and ESnet backbones pre-date the NSF regionals and received no NSF funding, being funded by NASA and the Department of Energy, respectively. These were established as national backbones, independent of the NSFnet though both did peer with the NSFnet at FIX-East (at UMD and later at SURAnet) and FIX-West (at NASA-Ames). Milo was largely responsible for the FIX design which was the pre-cursor in many ways to the current MAE design and both locations were connected to the MAEs.
It might be noted that both NASA and ESnet were originally primarily DECnet networks as they pre-date IP development by a little bit. They also, in there early forms (SPAN, HEPnet, and MFEnet) predate the NSFnet.
FIX-West is still in business while FIX-East is being dismantled as I type as BBN Planet is moving out of the old SURAnet facility.
Yea, I was in the old NOC on friday and wrote a large ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ | SURAnet | | '86-'95 | | RIP | | | ------------- Of course, I had to cross out the 'RIP' and write 'ISIS' :-) Erik