ATMNet

ATMnet was a regional Internet Service Provider (ISP) located in San Diego, California that began business in 1994, until its purchase by Verio in the late 1990s as part of a national roll-up of small ISPs. ATMnet was originally an operating unit of Visicom Laboratories Incorporated (Visicom) called Visicom Network Services (VNS). VNS was started by two Visicom employees as an experimental entry into the rapidly expanding ISP marketplace shortly after the government allowed commercial use of the Internet infrastructure. VNS initially provided dial-up services in the San Diego, California market and later provided dedicated Internet services to businesses through T1 and factional T1 "local loop" circuits. ATMnet operated under domain names atmnet.net and atmnet.com. ATMnet may also be best remembered as the host ISP for the legendary Quake Team Fortress clan "The Green Panthers" during the mid-to-late 90s.

In 1994 Visicom sold all if it's interests in Visicom Network Services to the VNS founders and a former Visicom executive. This group formed a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) doing business as ATMnet. This name was chosen to reflect the underlying technology (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) intended to form the basis of a new national infrastructure as ATMnet joined the emerging ISP industry as one of a small number of United States backbone providers. At its peak, the ATMnet backbone extended from San Diego to the San Francisco Bay area and eastward to Tucson, Arizona. The California portion was based on a fiber optic link operating carrying Internet Protocol (IP) packets over the ATM protocol as implemented in switches manufactured by FORE Systems. The bandwidth on this circuit was OC3c (155 Mbit/s), the first such link in the US to be used to provide Internet services.

After the sale of ATMnet to Verio, one of the ATMnet founders, together with the principal of one of ATMnet's Japanese business partners (The Kuljian Corporation), founded ATMnet Japan (aka Nippon ATMnet) based in Shin-Yokohama, Japan. This company provided various Internet related services and training for several years operating under the domain atmnet.co.jp .