John, your problem is that you have a 6 month old copy of PEERS NAMES because Eric does not auto-distribute it to sites that are not on the backbone for some reason that is totally uncomprehensable to me. You should pull a copy of it from BITNIC or someplace closer that has a current version (use the RELEASE command to see the date of the file before requesting it). Once you install the new PEERS NAMES on your LISTSERV, Mail-Via=DISTRIBUTE should work fine. Eric, why don't you send all 'current' sites PEERS NAMES? I can understand not sending to those sites which might be so old that they cannot handle the extra names you added several months ago. But why should those of us who cannot accept your requirements for backbone status yet still want to use LISTSERV efficiently for locally generated list have to go out of our way to make sure that our files are kept current, when other sites get this done automatically. Surely it is not that much more load on the system to send it to every site that can handle it. Bill