On Thu, 10 Feb 1994 23:27:55 GMT "John W. Redelfs"
<[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>I've noticed that the number of nodes in the PEERS database is down from
>last year, and I know of a number of Listserv lists that are being moved
>to other platforms.
 
While  the number  of  servers is  decreasing, the  number  of lists  and
subscribers, and above all the  traffic, keep increasing steadily. Before
the summer there were 3-4 million daily deliveries on an average weekday.
Now  it is  more  like 5-6  million!  5893k on  Thursday.  The number  of
subscriptions has  increased by about  500k since 9211. These  figures do
take into account the  loss of 25 servers over the  same period. When you
look at  the charts you  wouldn't be able to  tell when servers  left the
network.  The only  exception is  9402 when  most of  France left  BITNET
without  registering a  :newnode tag  in  advance. This  was the  largest
drop-out in  the history of  BITNET. All the  users got deleted  from the
lists since  their addresses no longer  worked and this caused  a visible
drop in the figures.
 
>Why is this happening?
 
Many universities are getting rid of mainframes. Some move their lists to
another machine, but  in some cases there is no  other suitable mainframe
in the university, while in others  local politics require the service to
be physically  located "in our department"  and not "run by  the bozos at
the XYZ dept" :-) LISTSERV isn't available for unix yet so people move to
other products, which as you said aren't quite as comprehensive.
 
  Eric