Editing BITNET Relay

{{About|Relay chat network over BITNET||Relay (disambiguation)}}
{{more footnotes|date=September 2013}}

[[File:BITNET Relay screenshot.png|thumb|A session showing SIGNUP, SIGNON, LINKS and HELP over BITNET Relay]]

'''BITNET Relay''', also known as the '''Inter Chat Relay Network,''' was a chat network setup over [[BITNET]] nodes. It predated [[Internet Relay Chat]] and other [[online chat]] systems. The program that made the network possible was called "Relay" and was developed by Jeff Kell of the [[University of Tennessee at Chattanooga]] in 1985 using the [[REXX]] [[programming language]].<ref>{{cite web | url=http://web.inter.nl.net/users/fred/relay/relhis.html |title= Excerpt from "RELAY: Past, Present, and Future" |first=Jeff |last=Kell |year=1987}}</ref>

This system drew its name from "[[relay race]]" which shares a comparable behavior, where messages travel [[Hop-by-hop transport|hop-by-hop]] along the network of Relay servers until they reached their destination. Messages sent within the [[United States]] would take a few seconds to reach their destinations, but communication times varied in other countries or internationally. If one or more network links were down, BITNET would [[store and forward]] the messages when the network links recovered, minutes or even hours later.

== Background ==

Before BITNET Relay was implemented, any form of communication over BITNET required identifying the remote user and host.

Relay ran on a special [[User identifier|ID]] using several BITNET hosts. To use it, a message was sent to a user ID called RELAY. The Relay program running on that user ID would then provide multi-user chat functions, primarily in the form of "channels" ([[chat room]]s). The message could contain either a command for Relay (preceded by the popular "/" slash character command prefix, still in use today), or a message at the remote host (typically a [[mainframe computer]]).

Computers connected to BITNET were generally located at universities and government agencies, due to limited access to computer network bandwidth. It was not uncommon for a university's entire network connection to run over a single [[Leased line|leased telephone line]] or even a 4800 baud [[dial-up]] connection. Thus using scarce computing and network resources for "frivolous" purposes, such as chat, was often discouraged.

== Popularity ==

One of the reasons Relay gained acceptance was that its system of peer servers decreased the network bandwidth consumed by group chat, due to no longer having to send multiple copies of the same message individually to each server. Because of this efficiency and the limited bandwidth at the time, users were often not allowed to use or develop alternate chat systems{{Citation needed|date = June 2014}}. Experimental chats like ''Galaxy Network'' and ''VM/Shell'' were asked to shut down before they achieved noteworthy success.

Bitnet Relay gained popularity in the late 1980s when Valdis Kletnieks at [[Virginia Tech]] created a [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]] version that consumed far less [[CPU time]], and again in the early 1990s when Smart Relay improved handling of message delivery.

Though Jeff Kell himself had made observations about the possible demise of BITNET Relay, only [[TCP/IP]] and the [[Internet]] brought about the end of BITNET and Relay. [[Jarkko Oikarinen]], the creator of [[Internet Relay Chat]], says that he was inspired by BITNET Relay<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mirc.com/jarkko.html |title=Founding IRC |first=Jarkko |last=Oikarinen |authorlink=Jarkko Oikarinen}}</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Relay (disambiguation)]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
* [http://web.inter.nl.net/users/fred/relay/ Historical Relay Pages]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131203015800/http://www.utc.edu/information-technology/profiles/qnh116.php Jeff Kell profile] at [[University of Tennessee Chattanooga]] website.

[[Category:Online chat]]
[[Category:1985 software]]
[[Category:History of telecommunications]]