Colophon
How this site is built, and the provenance of its type, imagery, and analytics.
Published: Updated: Read: 1 min
- Generator: Astro, which builds the site to static HTML. No JavaScript framework runs in the browser; the small amount of script on each page handles the theme toggle, the table of contents, and search.
- Design: Quiet Pages by Andrei Alba, used under the MIT license and substantially reworked for reference material.
- Type: IBM Plex throughout: Serif for headings, Sans for text, Mono where a monospaced face is needed. Released under the SIL Open Font License and served from this domain. IBM operated the NSFNET backbone with MCI and Merit Network, so the choice is a nod to a fact recorded on this site rather than a decorative one.
- Icons: Lucide, used under the ISC license, inlined as SVG rather than loaded as a font.
- Site icon: The NSFNET logo, Merit Network, used under CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped to the emblem, since the wordmark beneath it is illegible at the size a browser tab allows.
- Search: Pagefind, which indexes the full text of every page at build time and runs entirely in the browser.
- Images: Credited beneath each one. Maps, diagrams and screens are freely licensed or in the public domain; the photographs of people are used under fair use, credited to the institutions holding them.
- Sources: The bibliography is generated from a single registry of works, so the list of sources and the links in the prose cannot disagree. Each entry carries an archived copy where one exists.
- Analytics: Umami, self-hosted and cookieless, with public statistics for this site.
Cite this page
NSF.net. “Colophon.” NSFNET: A History of the National Science Foundation Network. Last modified July 31, 2026. https://nsf.net/colophon.