One year has passed since first announcement of RUNNet project at INET'94/JENC5. During this year the project made a path from a set of general ideas to the fully operating network connecting five scientific regions of Russia - Central, Northern-West- ern, Volga, Ural and Western-Siberian. On this way RUNNet faced several fundamental problems: chan- nel infrastructure and topology, interconnecting and cooperation with other networks, and information services. Many of them have been successfully solved. What made it possible to do this progress is stable financial support from the State Committee for Higher Education of Russian Federation and great user demand for such a network which stimu- lated enthusiasm of the people involved in the project.