Every university hooked its workstations to local area networks. Rather than connect to a single large computer, universities wanted to connect their entire local area network—or LAN—to the ARPANET. Ethernet made this possible. Ethernets were simple and, compared to the 50-kilobit lines of the ARPANET, they were tremendously powerful. Their rapid growth in the university and research community pushed the demand for network interconnection. If your whole university was not connected to the ARPANET, CSNET gave you a way to connect one computer at your university to the ARPANET.
