byxNET was spawned from the ashes of a combination of channels on efnet centered loosely around the first person shooter gaming community. The name is based on an acronym; 'byxNET' stands for 'bothrops yossman xach network', in honor of the three founding IRC network server operators. Since 2002, yossman is the only founder who runs and supports IRC servers on byxNET, and he continues takes an active role in the byxNET community.

One of the core ideas of byxNET is that of equality and tolerance -- generally speaking, you will find byxNET IRC operators to be people of character who attempt to keep abuses of power and authority in check.

in 2001, byxNET linked with cognet, an IRC network with ties to the openirc.net project. byxNET and cognet admins co-operate on all issues to do with the combined IRC network. neither cognet nor openIRC had an official website to link to at the time of this writing.

core byxNET IRC network servers, the byxnet website, webchat interfaces, and associated byxNET-related domain names, are all sponsored by yossarian holmberg and yossman.net.