The delays  are always  in transmitting the  message to  sendmail, rather
than within LISTSERV. That is, the  wait time is in the (system specific)
outgoing mail  interface, rather  than in  LISTSERV itself.  To LISTSERV,
this is just  one request that takes maybe a  couple seconds of execution
time,  with a  system specific  routine taking  forever to  run once  the
message  is ready  to be  transmitted. The  progress/measurement function
would have to be built in  to the outgoing mail interface, since LISTSERV
is not running (I mean it's just waiting without any idea of what's going
on or why) while the delay is  incurred. The outgoing mail interface is a
simple  piece of  code that  talks to  port 25  and it  doesn't have  the
concept of processing incoming commands, replying to them, etc.
 
  Eric