BITNET

BITNET: /bit'net/ n.  [acronym Because It's Time NETwork]
   Everybody's least favorite piece of the network (see {network,
   the}).  The BITNET hosts are a collection of IBM dinosaurs and
   VAXen (the latter with lobotomized comm hardware) that communicate
   using 80-character {{EBCDIC}} card images (see {eighty-column
   mind}); thus, they tend to mangle the headers and text of
   third-party traffic from the rest of the ASCII/{RFC}-822 world
   with annoying regularity.  BITNET was also notorious as the
apparent
   home of {B1FF}.