Please indicate the proper format to send a note to a bitnet address?

16 responses total.

interesting question.  Is there still a bitnet?  Maybe you can still send
to user@machine.bitnet but the person you are trying to mail to on
bitnet is likely to have an Internet address by now.

There is still a bitnet, as far as I know.

The folks I used to correspond to via bitnet addresses changed their
addresses, oh, maybe a couple of years ago?  The bitnet addresses no
longer worked, & my impression was that there was some reason that they
all left bitnet more or less simultaneously without any forwarding being
in place; given that I haven't *seen* a posting with a bitnet address
recently, I would have guessed that bitnet is no more.  But I really
don't see a wide enough range of postings to make that more than a wild
guess.

The address I remember off hand was of the form username@hostname.bitnet,
for what it's worth.

Well, I seem to remember seeing such an address, but now I can't place it.

I remember addresses like that too, although I don't think I've ever sent mail
to one.

My brother-in-law's address (at a university in Texas) used to be a bitnet
address; he advised us of the change and warned us that as of some indefinite
date the bitnet address would no longer work.  I also had had occasion to use
a couple of mailing-list feeds which specified bitnet, sending mail *very*
infrequently.  (One was the address for bugs found in the zip program, which
is still the one given if you do    man zip   & look for it.)  That had
worked, & then suddenly didn't.  (If "suddenly" is what I mean.  The next time
I used it, maybe a couple of years later, it didn't work.)  I think the
hostname was the same, but it's now .someuniversity.edu instead of .bitnet.
My guess at the time was that bitnet was dead, but it was only the result of
having 3 or 4 addresses change with no forwarding, so that could well be
wrong.

Bitnet still exists, and there are internet to bitnet gateways. These are
invariably IBM mainframes with TCP/IP (and expensive software option for such
machines, I might add) connected to the internet. I know of one at MIT.

Bitnet is good for two reasons:
- It gave us BIFF@BIT.NET :-)
- It proves how much uuencode sucks.

Otherwise, can't see how much reason there is to go on using the 
"Beyond It's Time Net" nowadays.

Now that we've resolved how to send mail to it, could somebody please explain
what bitnet was?  I've seen a few bitnet e-mail addresses over the years, but
never known what it was.

My understanding is that it *is* an email network of IBM mainframe computers
that communicate via RSCS over SNA connections. It is not past tense. You can
still send email between IBM mainframes this way. When the second-to-last IBM
mainframe dies, BITNET will be no more.

I look forward to reading its obituary.  :)

And then cyberspace.org can buy up the pieces and put it on-line! ;-)

VMS and other non-IBM systems were directly connected to BITNET in the past.

You mean its oBITuary, John?

That's a fair iNterprEtaTion.

Thanks Jeff. I rather suspected that, but wasn't sure. They probably still
are connected to BITNET then.

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