> All mail for BU.EDU is directed out towards NDSUVM1 - why????
 
I'll take a shot at explaining this one... ;-)
 
As has been already stated LISTSERV does not find a match for the
entire address "XXX.BU.EDU", so it then tries to match ".BU.EDU".
Since your entry in DOMAIN NAMES is ":nick.BU.EDU" and not
":nick..BU.EDU" as Ross mentioned, LISTSERV does not consider
this a match. ( Yes, it does something different from MAILER! ).
So then LISTSERV tries to match ".EDU" and finds that it points
to [log in to unmask]
 
Now, why does it get directed to NDSUVM1? Well, if your mail
or file is being sent via DISTRIBUTE, it should be sent to
the backbone LISTSERV closest to WISCVM, which happens to
be the one at NDSUVM1.
 
tricky huh? :-)
 
Tony