Pavilion is continuing to work hard at providing it's customers with the best service it possibly can as can been seen from the contributions from each department in this newsletter.

I am keen to keep Pavilion are the forefront of any innovations that can be found on the Internet. We're actively involved in a number of projects this month, including an interactive exhibition taking place at Fabrica in Duke Street, Brighton. This wil be running for a month from the 14th of November. (Take a look at (http://www.inconversation.com/). Also we're working in collaboration with Ericsson to develop a new and exciting method of communicating over the web, which we hope will be launched at the TMA Exhibition at the end of the month.

David Taylor - Managing Director.

PERSONNEL

Pavilion has strengthened it Technical Support department with the addition of Paul Jeffries, who joined us on the 3rd of November.

SALES

Pavilion is offering a 'Christmas Presence Special' to its customers to encourage them to have a Web Site on the Internet before Christmas. This together with a large price reduction on Web Space means that there never been a better time to 'Get on the Net'.

Email sales@pavilion.net to get the details of the Special Offer and the price reductions.

What is Electronic Commerce?

The Internet is taking new strides towards a "business friendly" aspect. Throughout the development of the World Wide Web and email, those businesses that have taken the plunge have learned that communication and advertising on a 365 day per year basis produces tangible results.

Over the past year the Internet has seen the introduction of a bewildering array of different tools and applications, all providing they're own version of "The Shape Of Things To Come". The diversity of operating systems, pricing structures and services have placed a barrier between real business applications and the realization of the initial goal: 'commerce'.

The Internet Service Provider (ISP) is now becoming both a computer connectivity and media orientated service provider. This places Pavilion Internet Plc (and all full ISP's) in a strong position to understand both the infrastructure and content demands made on business web sites. The World Wide Web can provide your business with direct access to update and modify your advertising material in-house. The next stage is to answer the growing demand for additional services that can be added to your web site. The introduction of Electronic Commerce was initially greeted with enthusiasm, followed quickly by suspicion directed at the security and reliability of providing credit card details on-line. This concern, largely caused by technology outstripping understanding, gave 'E' commerce an uphill struggle.

Solutions are now in place to provide Secure, and direct credit card transaction through any web site via a secure server. The web user is now in the position where they can browse on-line, order from a database on-line, and complete a credit card transaction (with direct confirmation from the bank) on-line.

The Internet community is a growing market place. With general market trends showing a reduction in the price of Multimedia PC's and the growing involvement in schools, community and business initiatives the Internet has become a vast commercial area that has not yet been tapped.

It is important when dealing with a medium that transacts a credit, without physical handling of money, to keep the client informed of all activity that is taking place. Your site can be designed to accommodate your clients needs with ease, you will even have the ability to provide customer support and react faster than any other advertising medium available at this time.

The secure server set-up is designed to provide information about each action throughout the transaction process. The client will also be informed when you leave the secure environment to continue browsing elsewhere.

The general rule when dealing with the Internet is that you should have a stable balance between the infrastructure (ie connectivity) and the services such as web hosting and email.

Pavilion Internet Plc have three years experience in providing services for the Internet. Having been one of the first ISP's in the South of England we have followed the course of Internet development as described above. Throughout this process we have maintained the fact that a strong infrastructure is required to support new technologies and reliability is only proven through experience.

Our services are designed to allow any client to build their required Internet presence so that they obtain the use of the technology, but also an understanding of how it works. Pavilion can offer the full range of connection from dial-up accounts through Network ISDN to permanent leased lines. We also have the ability to provide electronic commerce solutions and web site hosting with a view to including as many value added services as possible to make your site work for you (not vice versa.) The Internet as a whole is a fast moving technological community, we aim to stay in the developing seat, with a view to keeping our clients forewarned in this changing climate. More information on the introduction and development of Electronic commerce solutions can be obtained from sales@pavilion.net.

Ian Perry - Sales Executive.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT/SYSTEMS

As promised in my article in last month's news letter our K56Flex testbed is now up and running. The number to call is 01273 271614. We'd greatly appreciate it if as many of our subscribers could test it as possible. This is to gauge how the firmware responds to older modems, as well as how good the 56k connections are. At the time of writing (7th Nov) I've just upgraded the firmware to a newer version, and this might have a bearing on people who're already testing the new kit. Please let us know your experiences are to kflex@pavilion.net.

Our experiences with KFlex thus far have shown that there are two main variables that determine how good a Flex connection will be: the quality of the copper connecting a flex modem to the local telecom exchange, and the version of the firmware that the modem has installed in it.

The Rockwell code that drives a flex modem is being updated every month or so at the moment and so because suppliers tend to keep stock of items there's a good chance that any flex modems will be out of date already at the time of purchase. I've had reports this week from three people with Hayes Accura modems for instance, although purchased at around the same time they were running versions 0.51, 0.99 and 1.0. I obtained one directly from Hayes a few weeks ago that was running 1.1.

The different versions fix major problems with the connectivity and speed. For instance just by changing the code from 1.0 to 1.1 made the connection speed increase by 4000 bits per second, so that I can now get 48k instead of 44k from my BT line.

To determine what version of code your modem is running you can query it with 'ati' hayes codes. For instance the Hayes Accura responds to an 'ati3' code with its version. If you've got a version less than 1.1 it is recommended that you contact the manufacturer to get a new version of the flash code from them.

Another problem is one of upgrading code versions. Because Rockwell are producing new versions so fast the manufacturers don't have enough time to produce a tested flasher (update program). As the development stabilises we expect to see more support from the manufacturers on their web sites. We will make any code that we get from available on our technical support web site as it comes. Currently we're waiting for new Accura code from Hayes, expected in two weeks.

There is currently a discussion going on on our pavilion.misc news group and you may find local support on these issues available there.

Once we're happy that Flex won't interfere with non-flex customers we'll roll the service out on our 0645 270000, and 01273 270000 access numbers.

Josef Karthauser - Technical Manager.

Usenet news update.

The past work has seen some major changes to our news server, and I'm happy to report that they've all been successful - possibly too successful, as our new, faster server takes in so much news that we've decided to upgrade our leased line.

Not only is it accepting more news, it's keeping more of the news our customers want. I've implemented a spam filtering program that removes advertising spams, multiple cross posts, excessive multiple posts, and binaries posted to non-binary groups. This has allowed me to increase the expiry time on our most popular groups, so that all the 'Big 8' hierarchies ( COMP, HUMANITIES, MISC, NEWS, REC, SCI, SOC, TALK ) kept for 7 days on average, and the UK hierarchy for 10 days.

We will be continuing to upgrade the news server in the future, working to provide a fast reliable feed, with the minimum of spam and a good retention time of the groups you want.

Sam Eaton - Newsmaster.

Spam update.

Last month we made an announcement about Spam, and that we were about to implement systems to counter the flow of it through Pavilion's network.

I'm pleased to announce that we've completed the usenet news components of this and that our news server is now running pretty much Spam free. In the coming month we will be working on spam removal from the mail system. Customers should notice a marked reduction in the amount of spam that they recieved.

Josef Karthauser - Technical Manager.

More bandwidth to the Internet ordered.

We're pleased to announce that our commitment to our customers to provide the best connection still stands. We've had a bumpy connection to the net over recent weeks due to improvements in the news server. We've made it so good it's been sinking our 1mbps with usenet news.

To solve this problem we've ordered another 1mbps of bandwidth to once again double our capacity. This will be installed on the 17th of November, bringing our capacity to 2megs. We upgraded from 512k to 1mb on the 20th April, so we've doubled our capacity in just over six months of operation.

There are further enhancements planned further out on the network also. The Easynet Group has their own transatlantic connectivity provided by a Canadian company called Teleglobe. Their upgrade schedule within the USA over the next three months looks impressive. They intend to increase their connectivity to uunet, sprint and mci by a total of 4 x 45mbps by the end of the year, and be connecting to five new peering points by the end of February. This is something to look forward to, as should have a major knockon effect upon our Internet connectivity and reachability.

Josef Karthauser - Technical Manager.

Longer technical support hours.

Pavilion's Techical support team increased it's hours of operation at the beginning of November. Customers can now get technical support from 7am in the morning until 5:30pm during the week. By the end of November this will have increased again to 7pm, followed by additional weekend cover in December.

We've also increased the size of team, although due to staff illness and extra time being put into staff training the response time has got worse. Better service will be restored shortly. Thankyou for bearing with us.