One piece of fall-out from the current huge network backlog (now down to
a "mere" 289 files waiting at CUNYVM for PSUVM), is that all the server
machines at BITNIC, including LISTSERV, all seem to have been shut down
as of last Wednesday.  Actually, LISTSERV must have been fired up at
least once over the weekend because I got some mail from it, but it is
gone again.  It seems obvious to me that there is a much better way to
reduce the LISTSERV-related traffic through the busy links than to cut
off the service (and thereby antagonize all the subscribers and potential
subscribers).  Now that BITNIC has switched to the revised LISTSERV code,
it should be quite simple to link LISTSERV@BITNIC with some or all of the
available network of potential peer servers, even to the extent of
shifting all subscribers (other than the BITNIC locals) to the other
servers.  I address this question primarily to those very BITNIC locals:
why not link up?  The distribution load could be reduced to something
like three copies from BITNIC for each message: one on link EARNET, one
toward YALEVM, and one toward PSUVM.  The load on the network would be
hardly noticeable.  Presumably, the file-server functions of LISTSERV
could be foregone on the BITNIC server by one means or another, and new
subscribers could even be prevented from signing up (perhaps by
automatically assigning them to the nearest satellite server).
 
                                          JFC