LISTSERV delivers mail using DISTRIBUTE, to reduce load and improve turnaround time. Unless your BITNET connection is through a 9.6k line, this is more efficient than dumping everything to the local SMTP (unless the list is very small). Now, you may of course have recipients whose BITNET link is slow and whose Internet link is fast. Since most people run BITNET over TCP/IP, this is a silly situation: there is no need to keep paying for a leased line which actually degrades performance. But sometimes the users have no control over this. In that case, they should subscribe under an Internet address that cannot be mapped to the registered BITNET gateway for their institution (say something with a percent hack through a non-BITNET machine). Eric