Later, with additional public funding and also with private industry partnerships, the network developed into a major part of the Internet backbone.

The National Science Foundation permitted only government agencies and universities to use the network until 1989 when the first commercial Internet service provider emerged.

PDP-11/73 Fuzzball routers were configured and run by Hans-Werner Braun at the Merit Network[4] and statistics were collected by Cornell University.

Support for NSFNET end-users was provided by the NSF Network Service Center (NNSC), located at BBN Technologies and included publishing the softbound "Internet Manager's Phonebook" which listed the contact information for every issued domain name and IP address in 1990.

The NSSes were a collection of multiple (typically nine) IBM RT PC systems connected by a Token Ring local area network.

The RT PCs ran AOS, IBM's version of Berkeley UNIX, and was dedicated to a particular packet processing task.

[8] Under its cooperative agreement with NSF the Merit Network was the lead organization in a partnership that included IBM, MCI, and the State of Michigan.

Eric M. Aupperle, Merit's President, was the NSFNET Project Director, and Hans-Werner Braun was Co-Principal Investigator.

[10] Three new nodes were added as part of the upgrade to T-3: NEARNET in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Argone National Laboratory outside of Chicago; and SURAnet in Atlanta, Georgia.

[19] Starting in August 1990 the NSFNET backbone supported the OSI Connectionless Network Protocol (CLNP) in addition to TCP/IP.

Prior to BGP, interconnection between IP network was inherently hierarchical, and careful planning was needed to avoid routing loops.

[30] The AUP was revised several times to make it clearer and to allow the broadest possible use of NSFNET, consistent with Congress' wishes as expressed in the appropriations act.

A notable feature of the AUP is that it cites acceptable uses of the network that are not directly related to who or what type of organization is making that use.

Other email providers such as Telenet's Telemail, Tymnet's OnTyme and CompuServe also obtained permission to establish experimental gateways for the same purpose at about the same time.

Coincidentally, three commercial Internet service providers emerged in the same general time period: AlterNet (built by UUNET), PSINet and CERFnet.

During the period when NSFNET was being established, Internet service providers that allowed commercial traffic began to emerge, such as Alternet, PSINet, CERFNet, and others.

[36] ANS CO+RE was created specifically to allow commercial traffic on ANSNet without jeopardizing its parent's non-profit status or violating any tax laws.

[38] Meanwhile, Congress passed its Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act of 1992 [39] that formally permitted NSF to connect to commercial networks in support of research and education.

[11] The NSFNET Backbone Service was primarily used by academic and educational entities, and was a transitional network bridging the era of the ARPANET and CSNET into the modern Internet of today.

Competitively established, and initially funded by NSF, the NAPs were located in New York (actually New Jersey), Washington, D.C., Chicago, and San Jose and run by Sprint, MFS Datanet, Ameritech, and Pacific Bell.

MCI won this award and created a 155 Mbit/s (OC3c) and later a 622 Mbit/s (OC12c) and 2.5 Gbit/s (OC48c) ATM network to carry TCP/IP traffic primarily between the supercomputing centers and their users.

Elise Gerich and Mark Knopper were the founders of NANOG and its first coordinators, followed by Bill Norton, Craig Labovitz, and Susan Harris.

[48] For much of the period from 1987 to 1995, following the opening up of the Internet through NSFNET and in particular after the creation of the for-profit ANS CO+RE in May 1991, some Internet stakeholders[49] were concerned over the effects of privatization and the manner in which ANS, IBM, and MCI received a perceived competitive advantage in leveraging federal research money to gain ground in fields in which other companies allegedly were more competitive.

Even those who have some constructive criticism of the way that the network is presently managed acknowledge at the outset that you have done a terrific job in accomplishing the goal of this NSFNET, and its user-ship is enormously up, its cost to the users has come down, and you certainly have our congratulations for that excellent success.Subsequently, the subcommittee drafted legislation, becoming law on October 23, 1992, which authorized the National Science Foundation … to foster and support access by the research and education communities to computer networks which may be used substantially for purposes in addition to research and education in the sciences and engineering, if the additional uses will tend to increase the overall capabilities of the networks to support such research and education activities (that is to say, commercial traffic).

[52]This legislation allowed, but did not require, NSF to repeal or modify its existing NSFNET Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)[30] which restricted network use to activities in support of research and education.