#partial #introduction The RELAY network on BITNET was the inspiration for IRC. Nodes were known by their address (RELAY@BITNIC) and a nickname, traditionally a location (New_York). One exception was the node nicknamed "TwiliteZne", based at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY. Rumor has it that the chief student operator (me) picked that because no one knew where the heck Potsdam was. See http://phrack.org/issues/23/5.html for a partial node list and a few tidbits of ancient network history.
@fuzzface@mastodon.technologyoh yeah, I had to go through CMU's servers to get on BITNET. Wow, it's been so long.
@fuzzface RELAY itself was a necessary technological replacement for Chat at Penn State, which was eating BITNET with its inefficient message forwarding.
@Alrescha Quite correct. TwiliteZne (RELAY@CLVM) received data from users in NY, CT and MA as I recall. But only one copy of each message went upstream to Yale and beyond. I was saddened to hear that the designer of Relay, Jeff Kell passed away a few years ago. I used to work with Valdis, who wrote the Pascal version, but we lost touch a while ago.
@fuzzface I remember BITNET.