I was talked into becoming a backbone server by the friendly site that was the backbone upstream from me. It is really nice to have my local LISTSERV maintain the LIST of LISTs and other global stuff so that when I send thinkgs to it to be forwarded to the hosting site, I am told where it is rather than '... forwarding to the nearest backbone ...' message. I can also exercise a little more control over when things occur locally. And it is a painless conversion ... Eric adjusts the state of the universe from Europe and voila. Dwight McCann : "Big signature blocks are very inconsiderate!"