ANSNET : Networking Technology

<h3>ANSNET : Networking Technology</h3>Companies around the world began to connect to the Internet, and nonresearch uses increased rapidly. Traffic on NSFNET had grown to almost one billion packets per day, and the 1.5 Mbps capacity was becoming insufficient for several of the circuits. A higher capacity backbone was needed. As a result, the U.S. government began a policy of cornmercialization and privatization. NSF decided to move the backbone to a private company and to charge institutions for connections.

Responding to the new government policy in December of 1991, IBM, MERIT, and MCI formed a not-for-profit company named Advanced Networks and Services (ANS). ANS proposed to build a new, higher speed Internet backbone. Unlike previous wide area networks used in the Internet which had all been owned by the U.S. government,
ANS would own the new backbone. By 1993, ANS had installed a new network that replaced NSFNET. Called ANSNET, the backbone consisted of data circuits operating at 45 Mbpst, giving it approximately 30 times more capacity than the previous NSFNET backbone. Figure 2.15 shows major circuits in ANSNET and a few of the sites connected in 1994. Each point of presence represents a location to which many sites connect.