CDATANET was a Confederation Armed Forces data network kept and maintained in 20th century earth. It was created and maintained by Incan Monkey God Studios from Austin, Texas, Terra.
It is not clear why the Terran Confederation kept data records in the past, how they gained access to time travel technology, nor when they started sending data back into the past.
Chris McCubbin was the Chief Archivist, and Peter Telep was a historian for CDATANET. McCubbin was active between 1998.271 and March 1999, releasing some of the data as the Wing Commander Confederation Handbook.
Behind the scenes[]
In Wing Commander lore Tri-System appears to be the leading experts in time travel based technology, at least as around the time of the 2670s or so when Privateer 2 takes place. It is unclear if that technology made it into Terran Confederation hands following first contact between the two civilizations.