your net:// Surfing free and easy

By CHRIS BARTON

If you wish to use the internet, feel free. Thanks, but what's the catch?

Incredibly, there isn't one. So much so that more than 100,000 New Zealanders are now doing the unthinkable - surfing the net for free.

The phenomenon first hit New Zealand shores in late February. Today there are three active free providers - freenet, i4free and zfree - which together have attracted 236,000 sign-ups. Exactly how many are using the free services is difficult to determine because many have signed up to more than one provider.

Internet consumers have never had it so good.

Signing up to all three is exactly what the Herald did - to find out just what free surfing is like. The verdict after a couple of months? A little less reliable, a little less functional and a little slower than paid-for internet. But overall - great!

With my paid-for internet provider - costing around $40 a month - I am used to connecting first time, every time I dial. I use the internet so much that it is an essential. With the free providers, however, busy tones when your modem dials are a frustration you have to accept .

At present, all the free providers intermittently suffer from this problem. The reason is that they have not got enough modems connected to phone lines to cope with the number of users dialling in. It is a common problem in a period of growth.

All free providers have grown much faster than they expected, and their modem-to-user ratio has not kept up. A ratio of 1:10 is good, but to really meet demand - to give the 99.9 per cent connectivity of paid providers - they should probably be working on 1:6.

Most internet users deal with the busy tone problem by setting their modem to "attack dial" - to automatically redial after a busy tone. Redial "Settings" can be found in the "Connections" menu in "Dial up Networking." Lately, during peak evening times, I have been getting through to each of the free providers on the fourth or fifth redial, which is not too bad.

The free providers vary considerably in the services they offer. Zfree, run by Clear Communications, is the most basic - providing, as well as surfing, e-mail, and newsgroups through a clunky, web-based interface.

I4free, run by CallPlus, is not a lot better, although it does provide e-mail relay, meaning you can pick up your e-mail from existing e-mail accounts - handy if you have an e-mail address you do not want to change.

Freenet, run by Compass Communications, is probably the most advanced, offering both e-mail relay and its own newsgroup server - meaning you can access newsgroups directly using newsgroup reader software rather than a web browser. It has also struck a deal with NZCity to provide news and information on its home page.

Newsgroups are a fascinating subsection of the web where people can read and "post" messages to a worldwide bulletin board on topics as far ranging as cooking and hacking.

It is something we will cover in a future your net.

If you do not already have access to the internet, signing up for these free providers is a problem. Only Zfree provides a CD-Rom pack - available free from Woolworths stores - to sign on.

The no-frills approach to internet service is also evident when phoning for help. Normally a free service with paid-for providers, this is where the free providers cost.

Zfree and i4free have 0900 numbers charging you by the minute for your call. Freenet does not have any phone numbers to call - meaning you have to use their website or e-mail to get help. That is not a lot of use if you have a connection problem.

You will also find that the free providers are generally a bit slower on access speeds. You can test this by downloading a file from a shareware site. With paid-for providers, you should get at least 3 kilobytes a second download speeds - although there are many variables affecting this such as the distance from your local exchange and the speed of the web server you are connecting to.

But from my home, I found all free providers were definitely slower, giving download speeds of around 2 to 2.5 kilobytes a second.

Slowness on the web has a lot to do with how much international bandwidth - the size of the pipe to the rest of the world - that your internet provider offers. Providers that do not tell you this, along with their modem-to-user ratio - claiming it is "commercially sensitive" - are to my way of thinking insulting the consumer.

The equivalent would be your water supplier refusing to tell you how big its reservoirs are.


Links


freenet

i4free

zfree