By now you should have received the mail from Eric describing a method
by which we can link BITNIC lists to the network of FRECP11 LISTSERVs.
Eric has taken care of the technical problems to make this work.  What
I think we should do at first would be to take some of the high traffic
lists and distribute them across the net.  I currently have 15 of the
BITNIC lists being re-distributed here at UGA.  The lists I have are:
 
          APPLICAT           MON-L
          CYBER-L            RSCSV2-L
          FUTURE-L           STD-L
          GGUIDE             TRANS-L
          IBM-NETS           UG-L
          LIAISON            USRDIR-L
          LINKFAIL           X400-L
          MAIL-L
 
I am looking for volunteers to take some of these lists.  Currently they
are mostly being used for local distribution and logging.  When we get
this project working, I propose we re-distribute the users who are on the
BITNIC lists to the distributed LISTSERVs, unless BITNIC is closer.
 
I am not going to go into the technical details in this note.  What we will
be doing is to link the FRECP11 lists as peers, with a pseudo-peer at
BITNIC.  I would like to use INFO as this psudo-peer.  Then, when a new
subscriber signs on to a list at one of the distributed LISTSERVs, they
will be automatically transferred to the closest LISTSERV, and if this is
the BITNIC LISTSERV, then the request will go do Judy who can then add them
to the BITNIC list.
 
We will use the Send=Editor with Editor=listname@BITNIC,LISTSERV@BITNIC in
all of the lists, so that anything sent to BITNIC will go to the lists
and anything sent to a list anywhere but BITNIC will be forwarded to the
list at BITNIC to be resent to the whole list.
 
I will be trying to set this up the first of next week.  I have to be out
of town this weekend, so postmasters, if you are interested in taking any
of these lists please send me mail.  I will be setting up the peer lists
and will return the list headers to you.  Judy and Ricky, we will probably
want to set up a test list at BITNIC and at a couple of the other servers
to check and make sure everything works right before putting something like
MAIL-L on it.
 
I have a modified version of LSVXMAIL which is required for all servers
who are going to take part in this, until Eric sends out the next release
of LISTSERV with the changes in it.
 
Enough for now.  I will be sending out the technical details later to all
who wish to participate.  I think this is a good idea and should definately
help to cut down on the network congestion, especially around the BITNIC
area.
 
We thank you for your support.
 
Harold