On Wed,  15 Feb  1995 14:34:44  EST Stan  Horwitz <[log in to unmask]>
said:
 
>Well,  this  system  is  extremely  busy  with  processing  Listserv-NJE
>traffic.  We  received  our   version  of  Listserv-NJE  through  CREN's
>purchasing arrangement with L-Soft. I am  about to attend a meeting with
>the managers of this  system. I am fairly sure they  will complain to me
>about the huge load our Listserv is placing upon our system. Would going
>to the  TCP/IP version of  Listserv reduce this  load on our  system and
>ease up our contribution to INTERBIT traffic?
 
I  would need  some  figures  to answer  this  question.  On the  average
LISTSERV@TEMPLEVM generates  mail to 80k recipients  daily. However, only
about 15k are distributed locally. So  my guess based on these figures is
that you are using INTERBIT, that  this creates NJE queues, but that your
SMTPs are lightly loaded. None of  this should consume much CPU time, but
it could indeed create RSCS queues. In  general the only sites that see a
"huge load"  because of LISTSERV are  the ones that process  the INTERBIT
messages, or of course sites that run huge amounts of lists.
 
Anyway version 1.8b of LISTSERV-NJE  will allow you to eliminate outgoing
NJE traffic (there will be three levels and you can configure it yourself
to meet your needs). This would eliminate the RSCS queues by shifting the
traffic to SMTP. Your lists would get better response time at the expense
of CPU  cycles and I/O,  because the VM SMTP  is very inefficient  and it
takes less cycles to deliver mail via RSCS.
 
LISTSERV-TCP/IP can  do all that  and would  also allow you  to eliminate
incoming  NJE traffic  for LISTSERV.  The other  LISTSERVs would  use the
Internet  to reach  your server,  even if  they aren't  configuring their
LISTSERV-NJE to not use NJE, or if they are running version 1.8a or 1.7f.
In other words, LISTSERV-TCP/IP would allow you leave BITNET, whereas the
no-NJE mode  of LISTSERV-NJE  only controls the  traffic you  are sending
yourself; many other servers would still use NJE to talk to your server.
 
An easy way to reduce  the SMTP load on your VM system is  to buy a PC or
workstation running a  "DISTRIBUTE-only" copy of the  unix LISTSERV. This
license would  cost $550/year  (academic) including  maintenance, support
and access  to new versions (some  unix brands are a  bit more expensive,
write to [log in to unmask] for a quote). You can then have your VM LISTSERV
send all these deliveries to the unix LISTSERV running on the PC. A 90MHz
Pentium with 32M and a standard  enhanced IDE drive can do about 85k/day,
but you'd  want to run it  at around 50k/day for  optimal performance and
keep  the  spare  capacity  for  peaks.  I'll  have  figures  for  a  64M
configuration in a  couple weeks. The point is that  this doesn't need to
be expensive and you don't need to  migrate the lists to unix either. You
can keep your lists on VM and  migrate the SMTP delivery work to a system
where it is more cost effective.
 
>If so, how  do we make the switch  to the TCP/IP version? Do  we have to
>purchase the TCP/IP version of Listserv or is it something we're already
>entitled to? I suspect that we will have to purchase it via CREN.
 
Actually,  CREN did  not include  any provision  in the  contract for  an
extension beyond June  95 or for LISTSERV-TCP/IP.  This simplifies things
because you don't  have to worry about the CREN  contract any longer. The
maintenance you've  paid for will  run to  term but for  new transactions
this contract is no longer applicable.
 
  Eric