ATMnet was a regional Internet service provider (ISP) located in San Diego, California, United States.

VNS was started by two Visicom employees (Mike Trest and Tom Lettington) as an experimental entry into the rapidly expanding ISP marketplace shortly after the government allowed commercial use of the Internet infrastructure.

This name was chosen to reflect the underlying technology (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) intended to form the basis of a new national infrastructure as ATMnet joined the emerging ISP industry as one of a small number of United States backbone providers.

Indeed, as a representative member of the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX.org), ATMnet CTO appeared before the U.S. Federal Communications Commission[4] to speak out against claims by Pacific Bell and other large phone companies.

ATMNet's infrastructure at the time included dual fiber optic OC3-c connections to the regional Internet meet points in northern California operating at 155 Mbit/s.