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