Summary

  • Industry Canada’s 1997 report records two 1994 moves: CANARIE upgraded CA*net to T-1, and a separate undertaking helped connect regional networks in the Northwest and Yukon Territories to the national backbone.
  • CANARIE’s history places leased 56 Kbps lines in service by late fall 1994. A federal directory then described NTnet’s initial dedicated-line users as beta testers through 15 January 1995, with service to all 60 Northwest Territories communities still a five-year plan.

Analysis

A national backbone can reach a territory before local Internet service is ready for ordinary use. Canada’s 1994 network record shows both stages side by side.

CA*net began in June 1990 as a national backbone built to connect regional research networks. By 1990, those networks covered all ten provinces. CANARIE’s 1994 work upgraded the backbone to T-1 and separately helped connect the Northwest and Yukon regional networks. The two undertakings were recorded in the same year, but they described different jobs: increasing capacity in the national trunk and extending the network north.

CANARIE’s institutional history fills in the northern sequence. Yukon already had a small network linking ten communities over leased NorthwesTel lines. In the Northwest Territories, an informal group organized as NTnet. During a mid-1994 visit, CAnet committed to points of presence in Whitehorse and Yellowknife. NorthwesTel offered financial support to both territorial networks. By late fall, leased 56 Kbps lines from NorthwesTel through INSINC were installed, and YukonNet and NTnet had joined CAnet.

The federal directory published in 1995 gives the local operating status. It lists NTnet as a regional Internet provider and a nonprofit society approved by CA*net. Its entry describes dedicated-line access for the initial users, with dial-up available where local providers offered it. NTnet was operating in beta for those first dedicated-line users through 15 January 1995. Its five-year plan aimed to extend service to all 60 Northwest Territories communities.

That record changes what “national” measures. At the backbone layer, a northern regional network had joined CA*net. At the service layer, NTnet was still testing its first dedicated connections and planning how to reach communities beyond them. A northern point of presence and a working local access service were separate milestones.

The 1995 directory gives NTnet’s target, not the later community-by-community rollout; a dated access and circuit list would show where the five-year plan reached.

The 1994 milestone was real: the national network acquired northern members. The beta label was real too: local service still had to earn its routine status one connection at a time.

Sources