The first development of real consequence to the UK academic community was the founding of JANET, the Joint Academic Network in the UK. The founders of JANET, the Joint Network Team (JNT) came into being in 1979, defining the Coloured Book set of protocols, so called because each was identified by the colour of the cover of its defining document. The early set provided for character terminal and file transfer applications across the existing public X.25 network; later ones allowed the introduction of electronic mail.
JANET itself was created in 1984, and access was restricted to the academic community and served around 50 sites. Over time the speed of the network has been increased until now most Universities are connected together at between 2-10Mbits/s rates. Recently several main Universities have been connected to SuperJANET which is a optical fibre network.
In 1991, the Internet Protocols were added to JANET's capabilities in the JANET IP service (JIPS), a change that allowed JANET to become part of the global Internet.