ConnNet was a packet switched data network operated by the Southern New England Telephone Company serving the U.S. state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

 of Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

.

ConnNet was the nation's first local public packet switching

Packet switching

Packet switching is a digital networking communications method that groups all transmitted data – regardless of content, type, or structure – into suitably sized blocks, called packets. Packet switching features delivery of variable-bit-rate data streams over a shared network...

 network when it was launched on March 11, 1985. Users could access services such as Dow Jones News Retrieval, CompuServe

CompuServe

CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...

, Dialcom

Dialcom

Dialcom Inc. was a US corporation which developed the world's first commercial electronic mail service. It was founded in 1970 by Robert F. Ryan and was sold to ITT Corporation in 1982, becoming ITT Dialcom....

, GEnie

GEnie

GEnie was an online service created by a General Electric business - GEIS that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. In 1994, GEnie claimed around 350,000 users. Peak simultaneous usage was around 10,000 users...

, Delphi

Delphi online service

Delphi was an early U.S. online service provider that started as a nationwide dialup service in 1983.- History :The company that became Delphi was founded by Wes Kussmaul as Kussmaul Encyclopedia in 1981, featured ASCII-based encyclopedia, E-mail, and a primitive chat...

, Eaasy Sabre

Sabre (computer system)

Sabre Global Distribution System , owned by Sabre Holdings, is used by more than 55,000 travel agencies around the world with more than 400 airlines, 88,000 hotels, 24 car rental brands, and 13 cruise lines...

, NewsNet, PeopleLink, the National Library of Medicine, and BIX. ConnNet could also be used to access other national and international packet networks, such as Tymnet

Tymnet

Tymnet was an international data communications network headquartered in San Jose, California that used virtual call packet switched technology and X.25, SNA/SDLC, ASCII and BSC interfaces to connect host computers at thousands of large companies, educational institutions, and government agencies....

 and ACCUNET. Large companies also connected their mainframe

Mainframe computer

Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...

 computers to ConnNet allowing employees access to the mainframes from home. The network is no longer in operation.

Hardware

The X.25

X.25

X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet switched wide area network communication. An X.25 WAN consists of packet-switching exchange nodes as the networking hardware, and leased lines, Plain old telephone service connections or ISDN connections as physical links...

 network was based on hardware from Databit, Inc. consisting of three EDX-P Network Nodes that performed switching and were located in Hartford, New Haven and Stamford. Databit also supplied 23 ANP 2520 Advanced Network Processors each of which provided the system with a point of presence

Point of presence

A point of presence is an artificial demarcation point or interface point between communications entities. It may include a meet-me-room.In the US, this term became important during the court-ordered breakup of the Bell Telephone system...

, a network control center and modems. Customers would order leased line

Leased line

A leased line is a service contract between a provider and a customer, whereby the provider agrees to deliver a symmetric telecommunications line connecting two or more locations in exchange for a monthly rent . It is sometimes known as a 'Private Circuit' or 'Data Line' in the UK or as CDN in Italy...

 connections into the network for host computers running at 4,800 to 56,000 bits per second

Bitrate

In telecommunications and computing, bit rate is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time....

 (bit/s). Terminals

Computer terminal

A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...

 would connect over a leased line from 1,200 to 9,600 bit/s synchronous, 300 to 2,400 bit/s asynchronous or using dial-up connections from 300 to 1,200 bit/s. The connection to Tymnet was established over an X.75

X.75

X.75 is an International Telecommunication Union standard specifying the interface for interconnecting two X.25 networks. X.75 is almost identical to X.25...

based 9,600 bit/s analog link from the ConnNet Hartford node to Tymnet's Bloomfield node.