The NSFNET was put together in true Internet fashion—it was fast-paced, innovative and, most importantly, collaborative. The project was a challenging one to take on in a difficult economy, but IBM has a tradition of tackling intimidating problems on a national scale. The teams from IBM, MCI and Merit worked together to overcome substantial obstacles and create a network that would change the world.
“In my new role as Chairman of the Board of Directors at Merit, I went back to some of the same people at IBM and suggested this project to them. It took several meetings to get the right group of people in the room, but when we did, there was a lot of common interest.”
Doug Van Houweling
Chair, Merit Board of Directors
“NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking Final Report 1987 – 1995,” Merit Network
1995“We were in a period of major changes and cost-cutting, so it was a particularly tough time to get an agreement.”
Bob Mazza
IBM Project Leader, NSFNET
“NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking Final Report 1987 – 1995,” Merit Network
1995“IBM and MCI essentially donated a lot of resources and a lot of energy for the NSFNET backbone service for the good of the country. Working on a team like that, where people from IBM were typically interested in developing products and moving them into the marketplace, and MCI was typically interested only in selling circuits, it was personally satisfying to see people with different perspectives on what is important in their organizations and their businesses, joining their ‘vision’ of a national network, so that it could happen. If any one of the partners had balked, we probably couldn't have done what we did.”
Elise Gerich
Associate Director for National Networking, Merit Network.
“NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking Final Report 1987 – 1995,” Merit Network
1995“It was an amazing team effort. Everybody worked together extremely well - designing, integrating, testing, and documenting the hardware and software, and configuring 150 systems that integrated thousands of parts.”
Walter Wiebe
IBM Academic Information Systems Networking Senior Manager
“NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking Final Report 1987 – 1995,” Merit Network
1995“The team worked well because we had resources, executive time, and the desire to make it a success, as well as a lot of good faith and good will. When issues came up, we evaluated them and, if we could, provided whatever was needed. For example, when we needed more routers, IBM got them for us. If we needed more lines for a test network, MCI got them for us.”
Harvey Fraser
IBM Project Manager, on-site team
“NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking Final Report 1987 – 1995,” Merit Network
1995“Many were the times when Hans-Werner and Bilal would hustle down the hall to my office and say ‘We think we have this problem ...’ or ‘Did you know about this problem?’ We'd sit down and jointly work out an action plan—it was great teamwork.”
Jack Drescher
Engineering Lead, IBM Academic Information Systems
“NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking Final Report 1987 – 1995,” Merit Network
1995“In the late 1980s, we also built EASInet and CA*Net, the European and Canadian Internet backbones, using the same technology that we had developed for NSFNET.”
Rick Boivie
Lead programmer, principal architect and manager of the team that developed the routers that would run the Internet from 1988 to 1995
“We have seldom seen a major networking project come off so smoothly, and never one of such a magnitude. The hardware was new, the software configuration was complex and innovative in a number of ways, the line speeds were an order of magnitude faster than prior NSFNET speeds, and the loads borne during the first month of operation were heavy. Despite these factors, the NSFNET backbone came up on schedule with high performance and reliability even during the first weeks of use.”
Guy Almes
Chairman of the Federation of American Research and Education Networks
“NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking Final Report 1987 – 1995,” Merit Network
1995“Few accomplishments merit a celebration more than [the NSFNET] in the creation of the Internet...a medium of unprecedented power [that] has literally changed our lives and significantly altered the world's economy.”
John Marburger III
Chief Science Adviser to President George W. Bush, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy
Keynote address at "NSFNET, The Partnership That Changed The World" Arlington, Virginia
November, 2007“The infrastructure we will need in the 21st century goes beyond traditional public works projects. I envision a national computer network linking academic researchers and industry, using the nation's vast data banks as the raw material for increasing industrial productivity and creating new products.”
Al Gore
US Senator, Author, High-Performance Computing Act of 1991
“Sharing the Supercomputers,” The New York Times
December 29, 1998