23 February, 1995 Ottawa
 
I'm just a lowly newly initiated list co-owner and do not work for a
university so hae no inside information on whether universities are
planning to stop offering listserver service.
 
However i very much doubt they would drop listserver service in the
immeidate future because the seervers do cut down the network traffic
relative to point to point mail, especially on the gateways between
networks.
 
However, one site admin I recently spoke to said his listserv machine is
rapidly reaching its capacity limit and as with other schools, they are
reluctant to take on new lists for outside groups.
 
The next step of course would be for the universities to serve notice to
owners of lists not connected with the university that their list must
move say in a year or so.  Of course extreemely large lists that have
many peer or slave sites are a problem as their exactplacement on the
network can optimize or degrade network performance.
 
Providing listserver services could be a growth industry for commercial
providers if the schools start to cutoff outside list ownrs.
 
It would be interesting to see how much traffic a healthy pentium 90 or
100 could handle.