Yeah via Abilene: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_Network

.edu to .edu transfer was unbelievably fast back in those days.

I was curious, so from Wikipedia: The Internet2 Project was originally established by 34 university researchers in 1996 under the auspices of EDUCOM (later EDUCAUSE), and was formally organized as the not-for-profit University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID) in 1997.