Talk:BITNET

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BITNET, Bitnet, BITnet, BITNet? The variations from seemingly reputable sources are staggering. Grier and Campbell, in their scholarly social history of BITNET, consistently use Bitnet, but CREN, the closest thing we have today to a successor to BITNET, consistently uses BITNET. So, I've standardized on BITNET. Logically, "BITNet" makes to most sense to me, but I've never seen that version anywhere. ;=) Bill 17:07 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I used BITNET in the mid-1980s, and I never saw it written as BITNet. I believe BITNET was the prefered form, with Bitnet a possible acceptable alternative.

IBM had a history of ALL-CAPS ACRONYMS, so this might be why BITNET is the common form.

One point on BITNET as store and forward -- I belive BITNET also allowed one to PASSTHRU (rlogin/telnet) from one machine to another on the network. I am also sure that a form of instant messaging from one node to another was possible. Perhaps BITNET was only store and forward for email. --Zippy 06:39, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

When I was using it in the early 90s, I referred to it as BITnet, as did most of the other munchkins with which I was associated. -- — I. Neschek | talk 17:04, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Store and forward - not a network property, but a software one?

BITNet supported interactive protocols like sending messages (via the CP/CMS command smsg, I think) to remote nodes. I remember also being able to use the PASSTHRU command to get to interactive logon screens on other nodes. So I believe the claim that it was "store and forward ... unlike the internet" is incorrect.

That said, I'm not sure how to reword the section. Any suggestions? --Zippy 19:16, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

CP SMSG was a variant of the CP MSG command that did not show up for regular users but could only be received by applications who explicitely registered for it. I used that ability to find out which users linking my disk were running my peer-to-peer chat client. Yeah we weren't allowed to run daemons at our university after some other guys made a game that crashed the mainframe. Sorry, just felt like some historic offtopic talk here. Back on topic: Yeah go ahead with whatever.  :) Store & Forward was the thing concerning e-mail and file transfers, but I guess for remote logins and messaging that can't have applied. I remember the RSCS virtual machine involved in this, but not the details on the protocol. --lynX