NEARnet

NEARnet was a high-speed (up to 10 Mb/s) network of academic, industrial, government, and non-profit organizations in New England in the United States. It was established by Boston University, Harvard University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology late in 1988; as of June, 1989, it included 14 organizations. NEARnet was operated by BBN Systems and Technologies under contract to MIT.^[1] NEARnet used the TCP/IP protocol suite and supported leased line and microwave links at speeds from 9.6 Kb/s to 10 Mb/s.

NEARnet had the goal of creating a regional information infrastructure in New England to support education, research and development. Special services and facilities, such as the Connection Machine, the Massachusetts Microelectronics Center, and library catalogs, were made available over NEARnet. NEARnet was linked to the NSFNet backbone via connections to the John von Neumann Center network and NYSERNet. It also has a link to the Defense Research Internet.^[2]