Merit Network

What Does Merit Network Mean?

Merit Network Inc. is a nonprofit organization that provides computer networking and related services to educational, governmental, health care and nonprofit organizations in the state of Michigan. Merit's network is the longest-running regional computer network in the United States. It evolved alongside ARPANET, and eventually became a cornerstone of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet), which served as a backbone for the modern Internet.

Techopedia Explains Merit Network

Merit Network was created in 1966 to research resource sharing between Michigan's public research universities. Merit got involved with national networking activities in the mid-1980s, when it connected to national supercomputing centers and contributed to the NSFNet, including re-engineering NSFNet's backbone service.