Heres just an idea off the top of my head. What about the servers at bitnic (and others that send out large numbers of large files that are exactly the same) taking each request for one of the files and saving it until the end of the day. Then it batches up all the requests for that day and sends a DISTRIBUTE job to listserv to deliver the day's files. The delay for the end user would not be and greater in most cases (esp if some ppl have been waiting months...) Would this work? or am I just dreaming? scott