I  will not  be able  to distribute  release 1.6a  of LISTSERV  to BITNET  and
NetNorth on the 1st  of June, as I had originally planned.  The reason is that
I'll be  going to Sweden for  2 weeks starting around  the 1st of June,  and I
don't want to distribute  a new release of LISTSERV just  before going away (I
will be  reachable on ERIC@SEARN,  but not 100% of  the time). Because  of the
time required to prepare this trip and of other local work, I will not be able
to put  everything I  had originally  planned to in  1.6a; the  only important
thing that will be missing is the  improvement of DIST2 that would allow it to
"spread" the  load across several machines  when they are located  at the same
distance from the distribution point.  Unfortunately, this is an important and
badly needed fix, but it's also something that must be done carefully and that
requires  a long,  contiguous time  slice, which  I presently  have no  way of
finding.  The good  news is  that I  have already  written the  code to  allow
LISTSERV  to  use BSMTP  when  mailing  to  internet addresses,  which  should
dramatically reduce  the load  on the INTERBIT  gateways *once*  everybody has
installed 1.6a. This code includes the  ability of batching up to 5 recipients
from the same  node in a single mailfile  when BSMTP is not used  (in much the
same way  as done  for non-DISTRIBUTEd  lists), which  should also  reduce the
traffic generated by large lists like LINKFAIL.
 
I will make a beta-test distribution some time next week, so that the code can
be  tested while  I am  away.  If you  want  to participate  in the  beta-test
programme, just  drop me a  note. Of  particular interest are  servers located
next to an INTERBIT  gateway OR hosting lists with a  large number of internet
recipients (both types are needed to successfully test the code).
 
Thanks in advance,
  Eric