Merit Network

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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.

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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.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.