For general discussion purposes, LISTSERV(tm) is a single-threaded
process and there is no such thing as "at the same time" in regard to
list message handling.  An incoming message arrives and gets processed,
then the next incoming message is processed, etc.  Even if you and
someone else literally click your SEND buttons within the same
picosecond, one of the resulting messages will show up ahead of the
other in the incoming queue and be processed first - with no
consideration for whether or not any other incoming message is present.

There are two possible "tied up" modes to consider:

a) the LISTSERV system itself will be busy for some amount of time
generating outbound messages and handing them off to the SMTP server.

b) the SMTP server will be busy contacting destination servers to
deliver those messages to individual subscribers.

You need to determine which one is the actual problem you're observing,
before considering potential solutions.

If your lists are so large that LISTSERV itself is tied up for more than
a few minutes to process one incoming message, your configuration may
need a tuneup/review, or your system resources may be constraining
things (processor speed, memory, hard drive speed, network connectivity
to the SMTP server, SMTP server performance, etc.).

If (b) is where you find the delays, dealing with how to get thousands
of messages out of your mail server into hundreds or thousands of other
mail servers is not really a LISTSERV issue.

I can think of two possibilities that might give you some relief.

1) use the PRIME keyword (site-level and list-level) to defer processing
of the large lists until selected times of the day. This keeps their
traffic out of the way of smaller lists that you want to see better
turnaround on.  For example, you may choose to allow processing the
large lists only at 9:00 pm or later.  If the large lists are mainly
announcements and their content is not time-critical, maybe most people
won't be bothered by the delay (or maybe people receiving the smaller
lists are more important than people on the large lists).

2) explore options with the Delivery-Pool keyword.  This is documented
in the Advanced Topics manual and is very site-specific.  The basic idea
is you may assign each list to a pool, and configure each pool in
various ways to influence how out-going traffic is handled.

The info in this Tech Tip may be useful, too:
http://www.lsoft.com/news/techtipLSV-issue1-2007-us.asp




On 1/31/2013 8:30 PM, Marshall, Clinton C wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have several large lists that when used they tie up the List server,
> does anyone now of a way to prioritise posts for a List if both are been
> sent at the same time,
>
> regards
>
> Clinton Marshall

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