BITNET
BITNET is short form for Because It’s Time Network. BITNET is one of the oldest and largest major wide-area networks, used extensively by universities and other academic and research computer networks to store and forward messages that are sent between users. This system was often used before the Internet was developed, but today its use is limited.
BITNET isn’t truly a part of the Internet as it is not based on the TCP/IP protocols that Internet networks generally use. BITNET users can send and receive electronic mails to and from the Internet, due to gateways that act as “translators” between the different network protocols.
Other non-TCP/IP networks are also linked to the Internet using a mixture of gateways, but more commonly, the sites on BITNET and other networks that don’t do TCP/IP are switching to networks with capabilities of talking in the TCP/IP language so that they can fully utilize the resources of the Internet. The popularity and use of BITNET seems to be on a decline and its numbers of sites and users is reducing as sites manage to connect directly to the Internet.
There’s also a new version of BITNET, called BITNET-II, which relies on the Internet network to transfer messages and files.
