I think the issue is really the difference in behavior between lists with Mail-via=DISTx and non-DIST lists, rather than the difference between DIST1 and DIST2. I too think that it would be a significant improvement if LISTSERV were changed so that DISTributed lists did their final explosion using the MAILER on the last LISTSERV node. In June's case, this would mean that LISTSERV at BYUADMIN would pass just one mail file to the BYUADMIN MAILER for all "n" STANFORD recipients, rather than "n" mail files. This is the same way that LISTSERV has always handled the non-local recipients of non-DIST lists.