 Dedicated telecommunication lines, typically 2400 bits per second, were leased point to point between neighboring universities, with each university paying the cost of one leased line to its nearest neighbor.The scheme came after the development of the BITNET network in the United Stares which used the same protocols, and an interconnection between the Canadian cluster of universities, called NetNorth, and the larger and quickly growing BITNET network in the US was negotiated and made operational at the startup in 1984.Other gateways were developed to interconnect between ARPAnet, BITNET, CSNET, NSFNET and others, and the early adopting Canadian universities were soon able to connect to many thousands of computer network nodes in the USA and internationally.