The NSFNET backbone was shut down on April 30, 1995, as the NSF funding for it ended. NSF is continuing to fund some regional nets, but this funding steadily decreases to zero over five years. Instead, the NSF is funding Network Access Points (NAPS) near Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. The NAPs are interconnection points for backbone providers. See [Fazio1995] for an article describing the transition in detail; current information is available at the Merit Web site for information on the transition. The NSF is also funding a routing arbiter service to provide fair and efficient routing among the various backbones and regionals.
The NSF is also funding the vBNS (very-high speed backbone network service) to connect five of its supercomputer sites at 155 Mbps. Its emphasis will be on developing capabilities for high-definition remote visualization and video transmission.