I will not be able to distribute release 1.6a of LISTSERV to BITNET and NetNorth on the 1st of June, as I had originally planned. The reason is that I'll be going to Sweden for 2 weeks starting around the 1st of June, and I don't want to distribute a new release of LISTSERV just before going away (I will be reachable on ERIC@SEARN, but not 100% of the time). Because of the time required to prepare this trip and of other local work, I will not be able to put everything I had originally planned to in 1.6a; the only important thing that will be missing is the improvement of DIST2 that would allow it to "spread" the load across several machines when they are located at the same distance from the distribution point. Unfortunately, this is an important and badly needed fix, but it's also something that must be done carefully and that requires a long, contiguous time slice, which I presently have no way of finding. The good news is that I have already written the code to allow LISTSERV to use BSMTP when mailing to internet addresses, which should dramatically reduce the load on the INTERBIT gateways *once* everybody has installed 1.6a. This code includes the ability of batching up to 5 recipients from the same node in a single mailfile when BSMTP is not used (in much the same way as done for non-DISTRIBUTEd lists), which should also reduce the traffic generated by large lists like LINKFAIL. I will make a beta-test distribution some time next week, so that the code can be tested while I am away. If you want to participate in the beta-test programme, just drop me a note. Of particular interest are servers located next to an INTERBIT gateway OR hosting lists with a large number of internet recipients (both types are needed to successfully test the code). Thanks in advance, Eric