Internet Flashback, February 1998: China’s One Phone Line via Sprint in LA to Global Peering with Digital Island

In 1998, CERNET (China Education and Research Network), anchored by Tsinghua University, was a single 64kb phone line intranet linking 300 universities across China, with a matching 64kb port to SprintLink in Los Angeles—its lone global connection. With one phone line’s capacity, it strained to serve millions of users. SprintLink, a U.S.-centric backbone, gave CERNET basic internet access, a one-way trickle (not peering), reaching less than 1% of the world’s internet users via a network one-hop—capping their global ambitions—unlike the Digital Island peering I drove, which delivered a mutual, high-capacity exchange, tying the world’s largest ISPs and 95% of online users into a seamless global network.

In February 1998, Professor Xing Li of Tsinghua University and I teamed up during my Beijing visit with his crew to craft a peering plan—a meeting where their vision synced with our tech to expand CERNET’s reach beyond SprintLink’s limit. We pitched peering to thrust China into the internet’s core, leveraging Digital Island’s unique infrastructure—the first autonomous global WAN we’d built, spanning six continents and linking all major ISPs. Shortly after, we fired up a $80,000-per-month T-1 circuit (1.544 Mbps—24x faster) and dropped our CDN gear in Beijing within their network, peering Digital Island with CERNET—China’s first internet peering agreement.

Unlike SprintLink’s weak link, our peering unleashed bidirectional traffic and rich content: Tsinghua’s 300-university network hit 24x faster speeds for millions, tapped 18% of the world’s population—1.2 billion people—via one DNS flip, and joined our global grid—six continents, all major ISPs, first CDN, 19 data centers. CERNET, guided by Tsinghua, spun this into eCommerce, juiced research with global data, and stood equal with Tier 1s for the first time, boosting Digital Island’s CDN traffic and cementing our cooperation in China’s growing market—driven by our customers at Stanford, Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, Compaq, HP, Visa, Mastercard, Charles Schwab, and E*TRADE, all drawn to CERNET’s capability and potential.

This cracked open a global gateway, paving the way for 5.3 billion users (2023, ITU) and $5T in eCommerce (2023, Statista).