BITNET
BITNET was a cooperative U.S. university network founded by
IBM in1979 under the aegis ofIra Fuchs at theCity University of New York (CUNY) and Greydon Freeman atYale University . The first network link was between CUNY and Yale.The requirements for a college or university to join BITNET were simple:
* Lease a data circuit (phone line ) from a site to an existing BITNET node.
* Buymodem 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 in that it was a point-to-point "store and forward " network. That is,e-mail messages and files were transmitted in their entirety from one server to the next until reaching their destination. From this perspective, BITNET was more likeUsenet .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 protocol s, calledRSCS , were used for the hugeIBM internal network known asVNET . BITNET links originally ran at 9600baud . The BITNET protocols were eventually ported to non-IBM mainframeoperating system s, and became particularly widely implemented underVAX/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) and somePersian Gulf states (asGulfNet ). With the advent of TCP/IP systems and the Internet in the early 1990s, BITNET's popularity and use diminished quickly. 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 .BITNET featured
e-mail and theLISTSERV software, but predated theWorld Wide Web , FTP and Gopher. It also supported interactive sending of files and messages to other users. The "Interchat Relay Network", popularly known asBitnet Relay , was created with the network'sinstant messaging feature. BITNET's first electronic magazine, VM/COM, began as aUniversity of Maine 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 fictionezine ,DargonZine , which started life on BITNET as Fantasy and Science-Fiction on the Internet (FSFnet) continues to publish to this day.In
1984 , atext-based BITNET game called MAD became the first global Multi-User Dungeon (MUD). Players connected from the USA, Europe or Israel to the unique server running in France.In 1996, CREN 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.ee also
*
Christmas Tree EXEC
*History of the Internet External links
* [http://csdl.computer.org/comp/mags/an/2000/02/a2032abs.htm A Social History of Bitnet and Listserv, 1985–1991]
* [http://livinginternet.com/u/ui_bitnet.htm Living Internet - BITNET]
* [http://nethistory.dumbentia.com NetHistory - Archive of BITNET newsletters and stories]
* [http://listserv.uh.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9101&L=pacs-l&D=0&F=P&T=0&P=7954 BITNET II] , PACS-L, 1991.
* [http://dargonzine.org DargonZine] - link to DargonZine homepage
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