The London Metropolitan Network (LMN) was originally set up in 1996 as the London MAN as part of a UK wide initiative to establish Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) to take advantage of new regional opportunities for telecommunications services. Initially, it connected24 sites from 18 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It provided high bandwidth connection to SuperJANET and cost effective connections between campuses. The core of the network was a ring of six Points of Presence (PoPs) linked at 155Mbps. Individual institutions were connected at 34Mbps and connection to SuperJANET was at ULCC at 155Mbps. Over the years the number of connections grew to 70 sites from 33 HEIs.

During 2000, the network started to reach capacity. Because of the changes of ownership in the cable TV industry, developments in technology and the funding opportunities presented by the SuperJANET4 project, it was decided to completely replace the network and a formal procurement under EU rules was launched in mid 2000. The procurement resulted in a new 2.5 Gbps backbone network with the telecommunications infrastructure provided by Thus plc and Cisco routers provided by Logicalis UK Ltd.

By 2007 the network was again reaching capcity and the network was upgraded to 20Gbps with the capability to reach 80Gbps in 2010.