Many establishments require you to dial ‘9′ before you gain access to an outside line. For example, if you’re dialing into your ISP from a hotel room, you will need to change the properties of your dial-up connection in order to access an outside line. You can easily do it by changing the number to dial when you try to connect to your ISP.

Alternatively, you can also use the dialing rules. This allows you to configure connection settings based on the location from which you are dialing. To access the dialing rules in Windows XP:

1. Open the properties window for your dial-up connection.
2. From the General tab, click the box to Use dialing rules.
3. Click the Dialing Rules button. The Phone and Modem Options window appears. Select the appropriate location.
4. Click the Edit button.
5. From the Edit Location window you can configure the settings that are specific to the location.

As you can see in the figure, under the Dialing rules, you have an option to configure which number should be dialed to access an outside line. Simply type in a ‘9′ or whatever number you need to dial beside the option to access an outside line for local calls, dial: (as you can see, you can also do the same thing for long distance calls).