Bitnet

BITNET means "Because It's Time Network".

It was composed only of educational institutions, although the protocols it ran were used for a huge network internal to IBM, which was larger than other networks such as ARPANet for quite a while. Bitnet links originally ran at 9600 baud. The software that ran Bitnet was eventually ported to non IBM mainframe OSes.

Bitnet featured e-mail and listservs, but predated network services such as web sites, FTP or Gopher. You could also send short messages to other users (a feature exploited by [Bitnet Relay Chat]?), as well as files.

One joke about Bitnet was that it stood for "Because Idiots Type Network".