The  problem with  UGA is  the  sheer amount  of messages  that they  are
processing.  In November,  they  processed a  30-day  average of  618,122
messages per day  (December is always less due to  Christmas). This means
they're probably doing over a million  during working days. That would be
11.5 messages  every second  on a 24-hour  average, which  probably means
20-25 messages per second during peak hours. They have a big machine, but
it's  doing a  lot  of other  things, and  probably  can't handle  20/sec
without impacting the  users who are actually paying for  the service :-)
At the  end of  the day, people  go home and  more cycles  are available,
while at the same time there  are less incoming messages. The reason this
wasn't a problem  a year ago is that LISTSERV  traffic has increased very
significantly  this year.  I  don't  have figures  for  UGA because  they
installed 1.8a  last summer. At  SEARN and HEARN, traffic  *tripled* from
9310 to 9410.  UGA is one of  the largest and most  active LISTSERV sites
and I  imagine that the same  thing happened to them.  For comparison, in
May someone at AOL told me they were getting close to hitting the million
a day mark, for their entire operation.  My guess is that they must be in
the 5 million range now, but that gives  you an idea of how much mail UGA
is dealing out on volunteered cycles.
 
  Eric