A Glimpse at Past Projects

• NSFNET
  From 1987 until April 1995, Merit managed and re-engineered the NSFNET Backbone Service project in partnership with the National Science Foundation, ANS, IBM, MCI, and the State of Michigan. The NSFNET led directly to the growth of the commercial Internet.
  
  
• RADb: The Routing Assets Database
  Merit developed the Routing Assets Database (RADb) in the early 1990's as part of the NSF-funded Routing Arbiter Project. The RADb is a public registry of routing information for networks in the Internet.
  
  
• NANOG
  From 1994 to 2010, Merit coordinated and managed the activities of the North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG). NANOG evolved from the "Regional-Techs" meetings that were part of the Merit-led NSFNET project, and became an important forum for the exchange of technical information and discussion of implementation issues among network service providers. In February 2011, management of NANOG was transitioned to NewNOG, Inc., a non-profit organization organized by members of the NANOG community.
  
  
• Internet Motion Sensor Project
  In 2004, Merit began participating in the Internet Motion Sensor project, led by the University of Michigan. The Internet Motion Sensor (IMS) is a globally-scoped threat monitoring system whose goal is to measure, characterize, and track emerging threats such as worms, denial of service attacks and network scanning activities.
  
  
• GateD and Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting Software
  In 1995, Merit acquired the GateD Consortium from Cornell University, assuming responsibility for developing the popular "GateDaemon" modular routing software, which is used to interconnect packet-switched networks worldwide. In 2000, Merit spun off two for-profit companies: NextHop Technologies, which developed and marketed GateD routing software, and Interlink Networks, which specialized in Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) software.
  
  
• Internet Performance Measurement and Analysis
  The pioneering Internet Performance Measurement and Analysis (IPMA) project, a joint effort of the U-M Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Merit Network, helped lay the foundation for data collection and statistical analysis in the Internet. The three-year project was launched by a a $1.6 million award from the National Science Foundation, following NSF's recommendation that Merit pursue statistical research and tool development separately from the Routing Arbiter activity.
  
  
• TeacherLIB
  In 2000, National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Merit and Eastern Michigan University $800,000 for "TeacherLIB" project, part of NSF's National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library.
  
  
• Routing Arbiter Project
  In 1993, NSF selected Merit and the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (ISI) to act as Routing Arbiters when NSFNET was transitioned to the commercial Internet. In 1995, the Routing Arbiter Database went into production. Merit/ISI Routing Arbiter team deployed Route Servers at all Network Access Points.
  
  
• Statistics Collection and Reporting Software
  In 1996, the Resource Allocation Committee funded development of Merit's Network Statistics Collection and Reporting (NetSCARF) Scion software package.
  
  
• Splitting Wavelengths
  In 2003, Merit engineers adapt standard optical switch, splitting single wavelengths into two to reduce costs and double bandwidth capacity on metropolitan fiber rings.
  
  
• Route Server Next Generation
  In 1998, Merit took part in the Route Server Next Generation project, which supported ISP routing at six U.S. exchange points.
  
  
• Lighthouse
  In 1999, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded $1.5 million to U-M College of Engineering and Merit for "Lighthouse," Internet security study focusing on large scale attack recognition and survivable network infrastructure.
  
  
• Multi-threaded Routing Toolkit
  In 1997, the National Science Foundation funded a grant for the Multi-Threaded Routing Toolkit, a joint Merit/UM project.