On Wed, 15 Feb 1995 14:34:44 EST Stan Horwitz <[log in to unmask]> said: >Well, this system is extremely busy with processing Listserv-NJE >traffic. We received our version of Listserv-NJE through CREN's >purchasing arrangement with L-Soft. I am about to attend a meeting with >the managers of this system. I am fairly sure they will complain to me >about the huge load our Listserv is placing upon our system. Would going >to the TCP/IP version of Listserv reduce this load on our system and >ease up our contribution to INTERBIT traffic? I would need some figures to answer this question. On the average LISTSERV@TEMPLEVM generates mail to 80k recipients daily. However, only about 15k are distributed locally. So my guess based on these figures is that you are using INTERBIT, that this creates NJE queues, but that your SMTPs are lightly loaded. None of this should consume much CPU time, but it could indeed create RSCS queues. In general the only sites that see a "huge load" because of LISTSERV are the ones that process the INTERBIT messages, or of course sites that run huge amounts of lists. Anyway version 1.8b of LISTSERV-NJE will allow you to eliminate outgoing NJE traffic (there will be three levels and you can configure it yourself to meet your needs). This would eliminate the RSCS queues by shifting the traffic to SMTP. Your lists would get better response time at the expense of CPU cycles and I/O, because the VM SMTP is very inefficient and it takes less cycles to deliver mail via RSCS. LISTSERV-TCP/IP can do all that and would also allow you to eliminate incoming NJE traffic for LISTSERV. The other LISTSERVs would use the Internet to reach your server, even if they aren't configuring their LISTSERV-NJE to not use NJE, or if they are running version 1.8a or 1.7f. In other words, LISTSERV-TCP/IP would allow you leave BITNET, whereas the no-NJE mode of LISTSERV-NJE only controls the traffic you are sending yourself; many other servers would still use NJE to talk to your server. An easy way to reduce the SMTP load on your VM system is to buy a PC or workstation running a "DISTRIBUTE-only" copy of the unix LISTSERV. This license would cost $550/year (academic) including maintenance, support and access to new versions (some unix brands are a bit more expensive, write to [log in to unmask] for a quote). You can then have your VM LISTSERV send all these deliveries to the unix LISTSERV running on the PC. A 90MHz Pentium with 32M and a standard enhanced IDE drive can do about 85k/day, but you'd want to run it at around 50k/day for optimal performance and keep the spare capacity for peaks. I'll have figures for a 64M configuration in a couple weeks. The point is that this doesn't need to be expensive and you don't need to migrate the lists to unix either. You can keep your lists on VM and migrate the SMTP delivery work to a system where it is more cost effective. >If so, how do we make the switch to the TCP/IP version? Do we have to >purchase the TCP/IP version of Listserv or is it something we're already >entitled to? I suspect that we will have to purchase it via CREN. Actually, CREN did not include any provision in the contract for an extension beyond June 95 or for LISTSERV-TCP/IP. This simplifies things because you don't have to worry about the CREN contract any longer. The maintenance you've paid for will run to term but for new transactions this contract is no longer applicable. Eric