The US National Science Foundation’s NFSNet, which links more than 1,000 university, business and government computer centres across the US, and provides access to a variety of supercomputers, and the European Academic Supercomputer Initiative Network, EASInet, which is a partnership of IBM and 18 European academic and research institutions in nine countries, will soon be talking to each other at the speed of light. MCI Communications has initiated a 1.544Mbps fibre optic link between the two, and an upgrade of the US end to 45Mbps was demonstrated with an IBM RS/6000 late last week between Ann Arbor, Michigan and Washington.
