Video History Project

Chronology

BITNET

Date
1981

BITNET (Because It's Time Network) starts as cooperative network at CUNY. Provides email and listserv to distribute info and to transfer files. BITNET adopted the IBM RSCS protocol suite and featured direct leased line connections between participating sites. Most of the original BITNET connections linked IBM mainframes in university data centers.

This rapidly changed as protocol implementations became available for other machines. From the beginning, BITNET has been multi-disciplinary in nature with users in all academic areas. It has also provided a number of unique services to its users (e.g., LISTSERV). Today, BITNET and its parallel networks in other parts of the world (e.g., EARN in Europe) have several thousand participating sites. In recent years, BITNET has established a backbone which uses the TCP/IP protocols with RSCS-based applications running above TCP.

Cite this record

"BITNET." Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2011. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/bitnet.

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Summary

BITNET (Because It's Time Network) began as a cooperative network at CUNY and provided email, a listserv and file transfer. It adopted the IBM RSCS protocol suite and used direct leased-line connections; most original links were between IBM mainframes in university data centers, with protocol implementations later enabling other machines. BITNET served users across academic disciplines and offered services such as LISTSERV; by the time of writing it and parallel networks (e.g., EARN in Europe) comprised several thousand participating sites and established a TCP/IP backbone with RSCS-based applications running above TCP.

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Last modified 16 May 2011

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