JANET is the network operated and developed by the [United Kingdom Education and Research Networking Association]? (UKERNA) under a Service Level Agreement from the [Joint Information Systems Committee]? (JISC) of the UK Higher and Further Education Funding Councils.
JANET was set up in 1983 as a development of SERCNET?. It initially ran on X.25? protocols and served around 50 sites with line speeds of 9.6 Kb/s. By the late 1980s there were around 200 sites connected to a 2 Mb/s backbone. Services were standardised by the [Coloured Book protocols]?. By the early 1990s JANET was the fastest X.25 network in the world.
But the JANET IP Service (JIPS) was set up in 1991, initially a pilot project within ten months IP traffic had exceeded the levels of X.25 traffic. The move to IP was boosted by SuperJANET?, which started in 1993 using a 34 Mb/s network initially among 14 sites and 10 Mbit/s SMDS access to around 50 sites. SuperJANET? II started in 1995 to increase the spread of JANET and helped to create a number of Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) using IP over ATM over a combination of 155 Mb/s and 34 Mb/s curcuits. SuperJANET? III is the current network - consolidating SuperJANET? and SuperJANET? II. A 155 Mbit/s ATM backbone was installed between London, Bristol, Manchester and Leeds. The network was extended using 34 Mbit/s and 155 Mbit/s links from which connections to other sites were made.
[JANET National User Group website]
See also:
The Japanese American Network [1]