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BITNET was a cooperative U.S. university network founded in 1981 by Ira Fuchs at the City University of New York
City University of New York

Not to be confused with New York University formerly known as the University of the City of New York.For similar uses see University of New York...
 (CUNY) and Greydon Freeman at Yale University
Yale University

Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, Yale is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher education in the United States and is a member of the Ivy League....
. The first network link was between CUNY and Yale.

The requirements for a college or university to join BITNET were simple:

From a technical point of view, BITNET differed from the Internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
 in that it was a point-to-point "store and forward
Store and forward

Store and forward is a telecommunications technique in which information is sent to an intermediate station where it is kept and sent at a later time to the final destination or to another intermediate station....
" network. That is, e-mail
E-mail

Electronic mail, often abbreviated as e-mail, email, E-Mail, or eMail, is any method of creating, transmitting, or storing primarily text-based human communications with digital communications systems....
 messages and files were transmitted in their entirety from one server to the next until reaching their destination.






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BITNET was a cooperative U.S. university network founded in 1981 by Ira Fuchs at the City University of New York
City University of New York

Not to be confused with New York University formerly known as the University of the City of New York.For similar uses see University of New York...
 (CUNY) and Greydon Freeman at Yale University
Yale University

Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, Yale is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher education in the United States and is a member of the Ivy League....
. The first network link was between CUNY and Yale.

The requirements for a college or university to join BITNET were simple:
  • Lease
    Leasing

    Leasing is a process by which a firm can obtain the use of a certain fixed assets for which it must pay a series of contractual, periodic, tax deductable payments....
     a data circuit (phone line) from a site to an existing BITNET node.
  • Buy modem
    Modem

    Modem is a peripheral device that modulation an analog carrier wave Signal to encode digital information, and also demodulation such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information....
    s for each end of the data circuit, sending one to the connecting point site.
  • Allow other institutions to connect to a site without chargeback.


From a technical point of view, BITNET differed from the Internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
 in that it was a point-to-point "store and forward
Store and forward

Store and forward is a telecommunications technique in which information is sent to an intermediate station where it is kept and sent at a later time to the final destination or to another intermediate station....
" network. That is, e-mail
E-mail

Electronic mail, often abbreviated as e-mail, email, E-Mail, or eMail, is any method of creating, transmitting, or storing primarily text-based human communications with digital communications systems....
 messages and files were transmitted in their entirety from one server to the next until reaching their destination. From this perspective, BITNET was more like Usenet
Usenet

Usenet, a portmanteau of "user" and "network", is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It evolved from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name....
.

BITNET came to mean "Because It's Time Network", although the original meaning was "Because It's There Network".

Bitnet's NJE (Network Job Entry) network protocols, called RSCS, were used for the huge IBM
IBM

International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" , is a multinational corporation computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, New York, United States....
 internal network known as VNET
VNET

VNET is an international computer networking system deployed in the mid 1970s and still in current, but highly diminished use. It was developed inside IBM, and provided the main email and file-transfer backbone for the company throughout the 1980s and 1990s....
. BITNET links originally ran at 9600 baud
Baud

In telecommunications and electronics, baud is synonymous to symbols/s or pulses/s. It is the unit of symbol rate, also known as baud rate or modulation rate; the number of distinct symbol changes made to the transmission medium per second in a digitally modulation signal or a line code....
. The BITNET protocol
Protocol (computing)

In computer science, a protocol is a convention or standard that controls or enables the connection, communication, and data transfer between computing endpoints....
s were eventually ported to non-IBM mainframe
Mainframe computer

Mainframes are computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, Enterprise Resource Planning, and financial transaction processing....
 operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
s, and became particularly widely implemented under VAX/VMS in addition to DECnet.

At its zenith around 1991, BITNET extended to almost 500 organizations and 3,000 nodes, all educational institutions. It spanned North America (in Canada it was known as NetNorth), Europe (as EARN
European Academic Research Network

EARN was a computer network which interconnected academic computing centres and provided a Gateway between Europe and the USA. It was founded in July 1984 and based in Paris, France....
),India(TIFR) and some Persian Gulf
Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf, in the Southwest Asian region, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Historically and commonly known as the Persian Gulf, this body of water is sometimes Persian Gulf naming dispute referred to as the Arabian Gulf by certain Arab countries or simply The Gulf, although nei...
 states (as GulfNet). BITNET was also very popular in other parts of the world, specialy in South America, where about 200 nodes where implemented and highly used in the late 80´s and early 90´s. With the rapid growth of TCP/IP
Internet protocol suite

The Internet Protocol Suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. It is named from two of the most important protocols in it: the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol , which were the first two networking protocols defined in this standard....
 systems and the Internet in the early 1990s, and the rapid abandon of the base plataform (IBM mainframe) for academic purposes, BITNET's popularity and use diminished quickly. It also contributed for the Gateways existed on the ARPAnet and growing Internet to exchange email with Bitnet.

The non-profit, educational policies, however well intended, limited exchange with commercial entities, including IBM itself when it came to assistance and software bug fixes. This became a particular problem in heterogeneous networks when trying to communicate assistance with graphical workstation vendors like Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a company manufacturer high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and computer software. SGI was founded by James H....
.

BITNET featured e-mail
E-mail

Electronic mail, often abbreviated as e-mail, email, E-Mail, or eMail, is any method of creating, transmitting, or storing primarily text-based human communications with digital communications systems....
 and the LISTSERV
LISTSERV

LISTSERV is the first electronic mailing list software application.Prior to LISTSERV, email lists were managed manually. To join or leave a list, people would write to the human list administrator and ask to be added or removed, a process that only got more time-consuming as discussion lists grew in popularity....
 software, but predated the World Wide Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
, FTP
File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol is a network protocol used to transfer data from one computer to another through a network such as the Internet.FTP is a file transfer protocol for exchanging and manipulating files over a Transmission Control Protocol computer network....
 and Gopher. It also supported interactive sending of files and messages to other users. The Interchat Relay Network, popularly known as Bitnet Relay, was created with the network's instant messaging
Instant messaging

Instant messaging is a form of Real-time computing communication between two or more people based on typed text. The Written language is conveyed via devices connected over a network such as the Internet....
 feature. BITNET's first electronic magazine, VM/COM, began as a University of Maine
University of Maine

The University of Maine, established in 1865, is the largest campus, in terms of full-time equivalent enrollments, of the seven campuses in the University of Maine System....
 newsletter and surfaced broadly in early 1984. Two email newsletters that began as Bitnet newsletters in the fall of 1987 are known to still be transmitting. They are the Electronic Air and SCUP Email News, formerly SCUP Bitnet News. The collaborative fiction ezine
Ezine

An ezine is a periodic publication distributed by email or posted on a website. Ezines are typically tightly focused on a subject area....
, DargonZine
DargonZine

DargonZine is a periodically published ezine or online magazine whose origins pre-date the mainstream use of the Internet. Formerly called FSFnet , DargonZine caters to readers of fantasy and science fiction literature and was first published in 1984....
, which started life on BITNET as Fantasy and Science-Fiction on the Internet (FSFnet) continues to publish to this day.

In 1984, a text-based
Text-based

Usually used in reference to a computer application, especially a computer game, a text-based application software is one whose primary input and output are based on character rather than graphics....
 BITNET game called MAD became the first global Multi-User Dungeon
MUD

In Online game, a MUD , pronounced /m?d/, is a multi-user real-time virtual world described entirely in text. It combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, interactive fiction, and online chat....
 (MUD). Players connected from the USA, Europe or Israel to the unique server running in France.

In 1996, CREN
Corporation for Research and Educational Networking

The Corporation for Research and Educational Networking better known as CREN was a not-for-profit corporation originally comprised of the higher education and research organizations participating in BITNET and CSNET....
 ended their support for Bitnet. The individual nodes were free to keep their phone lines up as long as they wished, but as nodes dropped out, the network splintered into parts that were inaccessible from each other. As of 2007, BITNET has essentially ceased operation. However, a successor, BITNET II, which transmits information via the Internet using BITNET protocols, still has some users.

See also

  • Christmas Tree EXEC
    Christmas Tree EXEC

    Christmas Tree EXEC was the first widely disruptive replicating network program, which paralysed several international computer networks in December 1987....
  • Id file
    Id file

    Id files are plain text files containing a playful description of oneself.Before the World Wide Web was invented, and long before social network services came into existence, people on BITNET used to send each other Id files as a way to introduce themselves....
  • History of the Internet
    History of the Internet

    Prior to the widespread internetworking that led to the Internet, most communication networks were limited by their nature to only allow communications between the stations on the network, and the prevalent computer networking method was based on the central mainframe computer model....


External links

  • , PACS-L, 1991.
  • - link to DargonZine homepage