History
1984 – The government funded the creation of the Joint Academic Network (
JANET), allowing connected academic institutions across the UK to mutually share information across a high capacity network, at a speed of 8Megabits per second
1995 – GMING (Greater Manchester Information Network Group) was created to provide a Metropolitan Area Network in the Manchester area, connecting the Universities, City Council, FE Colleges, Museums, Manchester Science Park. It was the first academic network of its kind in England
1998 – Universities and HE Institutions from the North Midlands and the North West of England, together with Daresbury Laboratories, collectively agreed to create their own Metropolitan Area Network, with the full support of JANET/UKERNA. Net North West was created, with 18 founding members, to:
- Encourage inter institutional collaboration in the region
- Provide high speed (155 Megabits per second), resilient networking capability within and between institutions in the region
- Support both economic regeneration and academic development, enabling HE institutions to make a contribution to the regional agenda
2001 – Net North West upgrade to SuperJANET4, which operates at 2.5 Gigabits per second
2002 – Net North West establishes a 100 Megabit per second connection to the commercial internet from its primary hub in Manchester. This allows non JANET data to travel the network
2004 – Net North West initiates plans to upgrade the bandwidth of the FE colleges that are connected to the network
2005 – Net North West upgrade to a 1 Gigabit per second Ethernet network, which is 125,000 times more powerful than when NNW was created - it means that the equivalent of over 7 ½ million floppy disks worth of information can be shared over the network every day. New network links are added between sites to increase the resilience of the network
2005 – Developments and discussions begin for a national upgrade to SuperJANET 5
2006 - The FE Colleges connected to NNW have their bandwidth upgraded. Adult and Community Learning Centres and Workers Educational Associations are installed
2006 - Net North West is amongst the first in the country to upgrade to SuperJANET 5, the latest version of the JANET network. This brings increased resilience to NNW users
2007 - Changes are made to JANET branding, and UKERNA/JANET is now simply known as JANET. Net North West reach of total of 100 sites connected to the network on behalf of JANET. Improvements are made for FE Colleges in the Stafforshire region.
