What Is Very High Speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS)?

It's said that the quickest way to a man's heart is through his chest cavity. What if you can't get to his heart? What if he's just an enormous supercomputer, and you're just a tiny little scientist trying to get to the next level of your research? You'll need The Very High-Speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS). The vBNS was launched in April 1995 and is a high-bandwidth network for scientific research. Scientists at supercomputer organizations use this network service to research projects unavailable for general use by the public. Supercomputers are like the LeBron James of computer hardware. They're the best of the best, the most powerful you can get. Supercomputers are designed to fill a need in scientific research that requires a lot of processing power. If a regular computer tried to process this much data, it would take a long time, potentially leaving your office smelling like burnt electronics. Supercomputers are explicitly engineered to handle this thing without breaking it down. They're made of steel and rustproofed with platinum or something! Supercomputers are costly! They cost millions of dollars and require an entire room to house them; you can't just pop one in your backpack and take it home after work. So how do scientists use supercomputers if they don't have an entire room dedicated solely to their use? They use vBNS (Very Big Network System), a high-bandwidth network designed for this purpose. vBNS resulted from a five-year collaboration between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and MCI Communications. The network service is a follower of NSFNet, which was one of the successes of DARPANET, the original Internet network maintained by the Department of Defense. It is essential because vBNS was created to better serve scientists and researchers nationwide. While it may seem like we've come a long way since then, those scientists are still using it and making discoveries!