During the summer of 1988, the INRIA connected the Sophia Antipolis NSFNet network to Princeton by a satellite link leased to France Telecom and MCI. The link became operational on 8 August 1988, and allowed INRIA researchers to access the US network and allowed NASA researchers access to an astronomical database based in Strasbourg. This was the first international connection to NSFNET and the first time that French networks were connected directly to a network using TCP/IP, the Internet protocol. Internet access was limited to research and education for some years.