Welcome to NetTN - Tennessee's Broadband Network Initiative

We are here to serve the needs of all agencies in State Government, Higher Education, including the University of Tennessee and all the Schools of the Tennessee Board of Regents, as well as K-12, eHealth, E911, non-profits, and private schools. In addition to our role as the network for State Government, we strive to serve as the platform for use by Local Government in all 95 counties and promote economic development across Tennessee.  The State of Tennessee’s prime contractor, AT&T, will design access connectivity with an overarching goal of ensuring expected performance.

• NetTN is based on a private Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) core network with MPLS Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to meet the State of Tennessee’s communication requirements.  This infrastructure is the basis for all future services over Internet Protocol (IP) and collaborative computing initiatives for the next ten years.
• The infrastructure is the enabler to building application-aware network-based MPLS/VPNs to link locations and efficiently transmit applications such as voice, data, and video over a single connection.  
• Access options to connect to the network include Dedicated Private Line, Ethernet, Wireless, and xDSL (where available). 

  Paramount features of the NetTN effort are security, availability and reliability

•  The physical NetTN network consists of a partial mesh topology designed to eliminate a single point of failure from isolating a Network Access Point (e.g. Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis) or Point of Presence (POP) (e.g. Johnson City), and minimize increases in network latency in a failover scenario.  
• All main core backbone links between NAPs are 10 Gigabits Ethernet circuits.  The partial mesh arrangement has been designed so that a failed core link will not result in excessive latency across a surviving core link.  
• The Johnson City POP will utilize, at minimum, redundant connections (e.g. 1 to Knoxville, 1 to Nashville) and will be sized appropriately to meet the NetTN Service Level Agreements (SLAs).  
• The NetTN Core backbone is scalable to 40 Gigabit services, and as end site bandwidth is ordered and aggregated, will be managed to the applicable SLAs.

 AT&T, in conjunction with the Independent Local Exchange Companies, cable providers and Electric Co-op’s, provide the technologies from a last mile perspective listed under the NetTN products and services page.  The service offerings incorporate a universal pricing structure across the state to assure that rural areas may participate fully in the development of electronic government services, extended education presence and information access.