The first network link was between CUNY and Yale. The name BITNET originally meant "Because It's There Network", but it eventually came to mean "Because It's Time Network".

Does BITNET exist?

Today, BITNET in its original form is largely defunct. However, BITNET II, which uses the Internet as a medium to transfer BITNET protocols, is still in use by some institutions.

When was BITNET created?

BITNET was a wide-area cooperative computer network made up of networks from different universities in the US. It was established in 1981 by the City University of New York's (CUNY) Ira Fuchs and Greydon Freeman from Yale University, with the first network link being between these two universities.