BITNET (original) (raw)

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Academic computer network

Internet history timeline
Early research and development: 1960–1964: RAND networking concepts developed 1962–1964: ARPA networking ideas 1965 (1965): NPL network concepts conceived 1966 (1966): Merit Network founded 1967 (1967): ARPANET planning begins 1967 (1967): Symposium on Operating Systems Principles 1969 (1969): NPL followed by the ARPANET carry their first packets 1970 (1970): Network Information Center (NIC) 1971 (1971): Tymnet switched-circuit network 1972 (1972): Merit Network's packet-switched network operational 1972 (1972): Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established 1973 (1973): CYCLADES network demonstrated 1973 (1973): PARC Universal Packet development begins 1974 (1974): Transmission Control Program specification published 1975 (1975): Telenet commercial packet-switched network 1976 (1976): X.25 protocol approved and deployed on public data networks 1978 (1978): Minitel introduced 1979 (1979): Internet Activities Board (IAB) 1980 (1980): USENET news using UUCP 1980 (1980): Ethernet standard introduced 1981 (1981): BITNET established Merging the networks and creating the Internet: 1981 (1981): Computer Science Network (CSNET) 1982 (1982): TCP/IP protocol suite formalized 1982 (1982): Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) 1983 (1983): Domain Name System (DNS) 1983 (1983): MILNET split off from ARPANET 1984 (1984): OSI Reference Model released 1985 (1985): First .COM domain name registered 1986 (1986): NSFNET with 56 kbit/s links 1986 (1986): Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 1987 (1987): UUNET founded 1988 (1988): NSFNET upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s (T1) 1988 (1988): Morris worm 1988 (1988): Complete Internet protocol suite 1989 (1989): Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) 1989 (1989): PSINet founded, allows commercial traffic 1989 (1989): Federal Internet Exchanges (FIX East|FIXes) 1990 (1990): GOSIP (without TCP/IP) 1990 (1990): ARPANET decommissioned 1990 (1990): Advanced Network and Services (ANS) 1990 (1990): UUNET/Alternet allows commercial traffic 1990 (1990): Archie search engine 1991 (1991): Wide area information server (WAIS) 1991 (1991): Gopher 1991 (1991): Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) 1991 (1991): ANS CO+RE allows commercial traffic 1991 (1991): World Wide Web (WWW) 1992 (1992): NSFNET upgraded to 45 Mbit/s (T3) 1992 (1992): Internet Society (ISOC) established 1993 (1993): Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) 1993 (1993): InterNIC established 1993 (1993): AOL added USENET access 1993 (1993): Mosaic web browser released 1994 (1994): Full text web search engines 1994 (1994): North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) established Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet: 1995 (1995): New Internet architecture with commercial ISPs connected at NAPs 1995 (1995): NSFNET decommissioned 1995 (1995): GOSIP updated to allow TCP/IP 1995 (1995): very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) 1995 (1995): IPv6 proposed 1996 (1996): AOL changes pricing model from hourly to monthly 1998 (1998): Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 1999 (1999): IEEE 802.11b wireless networking 1999 (1999): Internet2/Abilene Network 1999 (1999): vBNS+ allows broader access 2000 (2000): Dot-com bubble bursts 2001 (2001): New top-level domain names activated 2001 (2001): Code Red I, Code Red II, and Nimda worms 2003 (2003): UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) phase I 2003 (2003): National LambdaRail founded 2004 (2004): UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) 2005 (2005): UN WSIS phase II 2006 (2006): First meeting of the Internet Governance Forum 2010 (2010): First internationalized country code top-level domains registered 2012 (2012): ICANN begins accepting applications for new generic top-level domain names 2013 (2013): Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation 2014 (2014): NetMundial international Internet governance proposal 2016 (2016): ICANN contract with U.S. Dept. of Commerce ends, IANA oversight passes to the global Internet community on October 1st Examples of Internet services: 1989 (1989): AOL dial-up service provider, email, instant messaging, and web browser 1990 (1990): IMDb Internet movie database 1994 (1994): Yahoo! web directory 1995 (1995): Amazon online retailer 1995 (1995): eBay online auction and shopping 1995 (1995): Craigslist classified advertisements 1995 (1995): AltaVista search engine 1996 (1996): Outlook (formerly Hotmail) free web-based e-mail 1996 (1996): RankDex search engine 1997 (1997): Google Search 1997 (1997): Babel Fish automatic translation 1998 (1998): Yahoo Groups (formerly Yahoo! Clubs) 1998 (1998): PayPal Internet payment system 1998 (1998): Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator 1999 (1999): 2ch Anonymous textboard 1999 (1999): i-mode mobile internet service 1999 (1999): Napster peer-to-peer file sharing 2000 (2000): Baidu search engine 2001 (2001): 2chan Anonymous imageboard 2001 (2001): BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing 2001 (2001): Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2003 (2003): LinkedIn business networking 2003 (2003): Myspace social networking site 2003 (2003): Skype Internet voice calls 2003 (2003): iTunes Store 2003 (2003): 4chan Anonymous imageboard 2003 (2003): The Pirate Bay, torrent file host 2004 (2004): Facebook social networking site 2004 (2004): Podcast media file series 2004 (2004): Flickr image hosting 2005 (2005): YouTube video sharing 2005 (2005): Reddit link voting 2005 (2005): Google Earth virtual globe 2006 (2006): Twitter microblogging 2007 (2007): WikiLeaks anonymous news and information leaks 2007 (2007): Google Street View 2007 (2007): Kindle, e-reader and virtual bookshop 2008 (2008): Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) 2008 (2008): Dropbox cloud-based file hosting 2008 (2008): Encyclopedia of Life, a collaborative encyclopedia intended to document all living species 2008 (2008): Spotify, a DRM-based music streaming service 2009 (2009): Bing search engine 2009 (2009): Google Docs, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service 2009 (2009): Kickstarter, a threshold pledge system 2009 (2009): Bitcoin, a digital currency 2010 (2010): Instagram, photo sharing and social networking 2011 (2011): Google+, social networking 2011 (2011): Snapchat, photo sharing 2012 (2012): Coursera, massive open online courses 2016 (2016): TikTok, video sharing and social networking

BITNET was a co-operative U.S. university computer network founded in 1981 by Ira Fuchs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Greydon Freeman at Yale University.[1] The first network link was between CUNY and Yale.

The name BITNET originally meant "Because It's There Network", but it eventually came to mean "Because It's Time Network".[2]

A college or university wishing to join BITNET was required to lease a data circuit from a site to an existing BITNET node, buy modems for each end of the data circuit, sending one to the connecting point site, and allow other institutions to connect to its site free of charge.

In the early 1980s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) had several initiatives running to help spread the benefits of networking. One of these efforts was called CSNET, and it linked together several computer science departments across the country using TCP/IP. Another was a network of regional computer networks that linked up universities in different parts of the country. In 1981, universities came together to form BITNET, which allowed thousands of new users to experience innovations such as email and file transfers for the first time. All of these new networks showed the possibilities of computer networks and helped stoke demand for a robust nationwide network like NSFNET.

BITNET’s first electronic magazine, VM/COM, began as a University of Maine newsletter and circulated 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).

IBM gave BITNET a $2 million grant over three years during the mid-1980s.[3] BITNET's eligibility requirements limited exchange with commercial entities, including IBM itself, which made technical assistance and bug fixes difficult. This became a particular problem when trying to communicate on heterogeneous networks with graphical workstation vendors such as Silicon Graphics.

BITNET, with Remote Spooling Communications Subsystem (RSCS) and the Network Job Entry (NJE) network protocol, was used for the huge IBM internal network known as VNET. BITNET links originally ran at 9600 bit/s. The BITNET protocols were eventually ported to non-IBM mainframe operating systems, and became particularly widely implemented under VAX/VMS, in addition to DECnet.

BITNET featured email and LISTSERV software, but predated the World Wide Web, the common use of FTP, and Gopher. Gateways for the lists made them available on Usenet.[4] BITNET also supported interactive transmission of files and messages to other users. A gateway service called TRICKLE enabled users to request files from Internet FTP servers in 64 Kb UUencoded chunks. The Interchat Relay Network, popularly known as Bitnet Relay, was the network's instant messaging feature.

BITNET differed from the Internet in that it was a point-to-point "store and forward" network. That is, email 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 UUCPNET.

As of April 1988[update] BITNET connected about 400 universities and 1200 computers.[3] 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),[5] Israel (as ISRAEARN),[6] India (VIDYANET)[7] and some Persian Gulf states (as GulfNet). BITNET was also very popular in other parts of the world, especially in South America, where about 200 nodes were implemented and heavily used in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Part of the South African inter-university academic network, initially known as UNINET, and later TENET (Tertiary Education Network) was implemented using BITNET protocols in the late 1980s, with a TCP/IP gateway to the Internet via Rhodes University.[8] With the rapid growth of TCP/IP systems and the Internet in the early 1990s, and the rapid abandonment of the base IBM mainframe platform for academic purposes, BITNET's popularity and use diminished quickly.

An extract of MAD's connection log from 1986 shows the frequency of connections worldwide.

BITNET hosted its first multi-user dungeon (MUD) in 1984, the text-based MAD.[9] Players connected from the United States, Europe or Israel to a single server running in France.[_citation needed_]

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.

  1. ^ "A Brief History of "Bit.net"". Bit.net. Retrieved August 30, 2012.
  2. ^ Cailliau, Robert; Gillies, James (1 January 2000). How the Web Was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web. San Val, Incorporated. pp. 74, 75. ISBN 978-0-613-92163-3.
  3. ^ a b Fisher, Sharon (1988-04-25). "The Largest Computer Network". InfoWorld. pp. S7 – S10. Retrieved 2025-04-17.
  4. ^ Hura, Gurdeep (28 March 2001). Data and Computer Communications: Networking and Internetworking. CRC Press. p. 779. ISBN 9780849309281.
  5. ^ Tracy Laquey, ed. (1990). The User's Directory of Computer Networks. ISBN 9781483296418.
  6. ^ "Humanist Archives Vol. 4 : 4.1144 Bitnet in Israel (1/69)". Dhhumanist.org. 1991-03-08. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  7. ^ "As emails turn 40, scientists recall India arrival | NDTV Gadgets360.com". Gadgets.ndtv.com. 2012-10-09. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  8. ^ Lawrie, Mike. "The History of the Internet in South Africa - How it began" (PDF). Retrieved 7 August 2012.
  9. ^ Warf, Barney (2018). "BITNET". In Warf, Barney (ed.). The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Internet. SAGE Publications. pp. 56–57. ISBN 978-1-4739-2661-5.