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23rd March 2002

SLOW LOGON TO FREESERVE

Brian Grainger

I have been a subscriber of the UK's Freeserve ISP 'pay as you go' service almost as long as it has been going. They have now expanded their packages to include unlimited surfing time for a fixed fee. I thought this was beginning to affect the performance on the 'pay as you go' service.

A couple of months ago I noticed a deterioration of the 'pay as you go' service. This first manifested itself as a slower time to log on, from about 22 seconds to 30 seconds or more to find my home page. This was not because I was trying to log on at busy moments, because it is usually after midnight before I get started. More recently it would not find my home page at all until I did the equivalent of kicking the motor to get it going! I started my e-mail client and downloaded my e-mail and then my browser would start to work. Once things had got going it was usually fine.

A little while ago I paid a visit to the Freeserve home page and had a look around the service pages. In trawling around I noticed that Freeserve had introduced a second telephone number to access the 'pay as you go' service. I thought nothing of it, since my current telephone number was getting me connected. It was just slow afterwards. Anyway, I made a note of the new number just in case there were problems with connecting via the original number.

Last weekend it happened. The original number was unobtainable. Therefore, I altered my properties of the Freeserve dial up networking to change the telephone number. Having done that I got my connection to Freeserve. In addition, it logged on very quickly. I have been using the new telephone number all week now and it has performed perfectly. So, if you have been using the Freeserve 'pay as you go' service and experiencing problems you might like to try altering your telephone number.

Old phone number with poor performance: 0845 079 6699

New phone number: 0845 607 5602

(Don't forget to prefix with 1470 if you have caller ID hidden)

If you need to change your phone number then search for your Freeserve Dial-Up Networking icon. On my Windows 98 system this is found by going to the Start menu then selecting Programs - Accessories - Communications - Dial-Up Networking. The Dial-Up Networking folder now appears and inside it will be an icon for Freeserve. Right click it and select Properties from the context menu. On the General tab you will see the old phone number. Change it to the new one given above and click OK. Now, all your calls to the Internet via Freeserve will use the new number.

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