BITNET (Because It's Time NETwork)BITNET is a computer communications network linking academic and governmental institutions. BITNET traffic is predominantly e-mail, mailing lists, and file transfer. The BITNET is linked by gateways to the Internet.
BITNET has over 500 members in the United States and about 1,400 organizations in 49 countries interconnected by leased lines or other permanent links. It offers roughly 3,000 mailing lists, many with several thousand subscribers. Other separate networks that are interconnected to the Internet include FidoNet, UUSP and USENET.
BITNET is a "store-and-forward" network based on IBM's NJE communications protocol. Information originating at a given BITNET-connected computer is received by intermediate sites and forwarded to its destination. Bitnet-II encapsulates the Bitnet protocol within IP packets and depends on the Internet to route them.
Many Bitnet sites have servers that can be queried in one way or another, most notably BITNIC (the BITNET Network Information Center). To get a list of servers with documentation, e-mail to listserv@bitnic.bitnet with the command "send bitnet servers" in the body of the message. To obtain a list of all public LISTSERV lists, e-mail to listserv@bitnic with no subject and the single line of text: LIST GLOBAL. To obtain the file NETINFO FILELIST, a list of many available documents, e-mail to listserv@bitnic with the message text: SENDME NETINFO FILELIST.
BITNET is operated by the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking (CREN), a non-profit membership corporation.