In the mid-1980s, both the Fusion Energy (FE) and High Energy Physics (HEP) programs recognized the need for substantially improved computer network facilities. Until then, the Fusion Energy Community had been served by MFEnet, which was launched in 1976 as a result of the opening of a dedicated Fusion Energy supercomputer center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 1974.

To make use of the new National Magnetic Fusion Energy Computer Center (NMFECC), FE researchers needed high-speed data links between their home sites and LLNL. This need was met by the initial MFEnet configuration, in which satellite links connected LLNL to a handful of key national laboratories and numerous tail circuits linked those labs to the other FE sites.

By the mid-1980s, MFEnet had evolved from a medium for access to the NMFECC into a general-purpose network for Magnetic Fusion researchers.

HEP researchers had begun to use computer networking as soon as it became practical to do so, in the late 1970s. These first efforts involved microwave links between the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL). In the early 1980s a satellite link was established between SLAC and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) to support a HEP experiment at SLAC.