When you peer the list, you split the list of recipients among several machines, and each machine delivers to its own sublist. New recipients are assigned to the nearest server. This works for both BITNET and Internet subscribers, although of course topological data for BITNET is more accurate. As for the backbone, you can always join it. The most important issue is what version(s) you and the prospective peers are running and are going to be running in the near future. There are a number of problems with 1.7f peers if Internet-style addresses are used for the list address (ie "List-Address= FQDN"), and this will be the default option with 1.8b. If you're running out of gas on VM the solution L-Soft recommends is to move the deliveries to a cheap unix system (a PC with 64M can easily handle 2-3 times your current workload). This process is transparent to the subscribers who just see an extra "Received:" hop. Eric