BYTE Information eXchange (BIX) was an online service created by ''

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

''.

History

'' in the October 1984 issue announced BYTEnet, "a project in computer conferencing", with 200 beta testers who received free service during the "experiment". The magazine formally announced BIX in the June 1985 issue, offering an introductory sign-up fee of $25, and evening and weekend charges of $6 per hour of connect time: the service offered direct numbers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston. It was a text-only Bulletin Board System-style site running the CoSy conferencing software. BIX originally ran on an Areté multiprocessor system based on the Motorola 68000, then 68020. By June 1986 the company had more than 6000 subscribers, and the magazine printed excerpts of BIX discussions. In 1987, with 17,000 users, BIX moved to a Pyramid 9820 running DC/OSx. When the Pyramid became too expensive to run, BIX was ported to a DEC Alpha server. McGraw-Hill also used the same software internally. ''BYTE'' staff and writers such as Jerry Pournelle were active on the service, and invitations for further discussion were printed with many articles in the magazine. Access was via local dial-in or for additional hourly charges, the

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X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet-switched data communication in wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts a ...

network. Monthly rates were initially $13/month for the account and $1/hour for X.25 access. Unlike

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, access at higher speeds was not surcharged. Later, gateways permitted email communication outside the system. BIX was acquired by the Delphi online service in 1992. In the mid-1990s the Internet became more available to the masses and Usenet,

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, and competing services such as CompuServe and

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017� ...

were able to offer flat-rate services, which adversely affected BIX membership levels. In the late-1990s, as the Internet became more mainstream, membership and activity plummeted forcing BIX to cut pricing to $40 per year, with no per hour connection charge by using the Internet for access. Lower prices and full page ads in ''BYTE'' were unsuccessful in turning the service around. Consequently, BIX was shut down in 2001. Some members created a new service, based on an open-source version of CoSy, called NLZ (Noise Level Zero) where they continued what remained of the service, with many of the same conferences and topics that were active at the end of Delphi's ownership until 2018. Other CoSy-based conferencing systems of the same era still survive including CIX.

References

Pre–World Wide Web online services Bulletin board systems 1985 establishments in the United States 2001 disestablishments in the United States Internet properties established in 1985 Internet properties disestablished in 2001 {{telecom-company-stub