Talktalk webmail - Very slow response bringing up logon page

[NY]

Is there a known problem with TalkTalks's webmail? A client called me to
look at her PC which, among a lot of other things, was very slow to open
webmail. I have reproduced the symptom on my PC and internet connection,
which rules out her PC and connection.

It is quick to open the home page talktalk.co.uk but when you click on
"Mail" there is a delay of about a minute before the logon prompt page
appears. Once it has appeared and the details have been filled in, the
actual mail service (eg display of Inbox, display of Send New Mail page etc)
performs OK. It's just the time to display the initial logon page.

Is it likely that the connection will affect the speed of response? Both the
client and I are using non-TalkTalk internet connections. Is there anyone
out there who can try to reproduce the symptom from a TalkTalk internet
connection?


PS: I know that right now TT's whole web site seems to be down. I'm talking
about yesterday afternoon/evening when everything was working but with the
slow logon prompt.

[Woody]

"NY" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:EcidnXkDFcMQekvI...@brightview.co.uk...

Could they have changed their IP address and DNS hasn't caught up yet?


--
Woody

harrogate3 at ntlworld dot com

[Graham J]

Why use webmail?

An email client would work faster, because the computer doesn't have to
download the web page.

TalkTalk's webmail server is probably struggling to cope with the load,
whereas their POP3 mail server would have less to do and may well cope
better.

But in general perhaps your client should move to a different service
provider ...

--
Graham J

[Woody]

"Graham J" <gra...@invalid.com> wrote in message
news:mrd5rf$vbt$1...@dont-email.me...

The advantage of the webmail route as far as most are concerned is
that more than one person can have access and see what others have
done.

With a mail client (with which I totally agree) it would need to be
set up as IMAP if there are to be multiple users and that would
require someone to edit it on line once in a while or it would get
clogged up. There's pros and cons to everything.

From the point of view of access, you'd be surprised how many access
points in hotels etc block the ports of pretty well everything other
than surfing. You used to be able to use VoIP through McD's but since
they have farmed it out to O2 that don't work any more. Why they have
some paranoia about mail clients however beats me - and it's not just
in the UK either!

[NY]

"Woody" <harro...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:mrd7fh$6j3$1...@dont-email.me...

> You used to be able to use VoIP through McD's but since they have farmed
> it out to O2 that don't work any more. Why they have some paranoia about
> mail clients however beats me - and it's not just in the UK either!

They may block VoIP to prevent people making "free" phone calls using the
hotel's internet connection rather than paying through the nose to make
calls over their phone system - though mobile phones have rather knocked the
bottom out of that little scam that hotels used to perpetrate.

I've sometimes found that captive internet connections (where as soon as you
try to access a web page you are directed to a page asking you to login to a
proprietary server run by the hotel) *only* block web access, so you can
still download mail over POP.

So some places block non-web, whereas others allow anything but web to pass
through their paywall.



Anyway, to return to the original problem, it seems to have gone away since
the temporary outage of the TalkTalk servers: now you get fast response to
the logon page. The client said that the problem had existed for "a while" -
she thought that it dated back to when she changed from TalkTalk to BT as
her internet provider, which was several months ago, hence my original
question about whether access to TalkTalk's sites was deliberately crippled
from a non-TT connection.