/bit'net/ (Because It's Time NETwork) An academic
and research computer network connecting approximately 2500
computers. BITNET provides interactive,
electronic mail and
file transfer services, using a
store and forward
protocol, based on
IBM Network Job Entry protocols.
Bitnet-II encapsulates the Bitnet protocol within
IP
packets and depends on the
Internet to route them. BITNET
traffic and Internet traffic are exchanged via several
gateway hosts.
BITNET is now operated by
CREN.
BITNET is everybody's least favourite piece of the network.
The BITNET hosts are a collection of
IBM dinosaurs,
VAXen (with lobotomised communications hardware), and
Prime Computer supermini computers. They communicate using
80-character
EBCDIC card images (see
eighty-column mind);
thus, they tend to mangle the headers and text of
third-party traffic from the rest of the
ASCII/
RFC 822
world with annoying regularity. BITNET is also notorious as
the apparent home of
BIFF.