[1] Its purpose was to extend networking benefits, for computer science departments at academic and research institutions that could not be directly connected to ARPANET, due to funding or authorization limitations.
It played a significant role in spreading awareness of, and access to, national networking and was a major milestone on the path to development of the global Internet.
[6] The Purdue team, consisting of Peter Denning, Douglas Comer, and Paul McNabb, was responsible for designing and building the kernel interfaces that would allow sites outside of the ARPANET infrastructure to connect via public X.25 networks, such as Telenet.
Soon thereafter, connections were established to computer science departments in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Korea, and Japan.
CSNET operated autonomously until 1989, when it merged with Bitnet to form the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking (CREN).
The CSNET name service allowed manual and automated email address lookup based on various user attributes, such as name, title, or institution.
CSNET also developed dialup-on-demand (Dialup IP) software to automatically initiate or disconnect SLIP sessions as needed to remote locations.