WCF service timeout on asp.net page

I'm calling a WCF service on my asp.net site. sometimes this service is down and it takes 30seconds to timeout, which slows down my page as I'm calling syncronously.

What's the best way around this? decrease timeout? is there a way to see if the service is down before calling?

Thanks

If you are talking about usablity point of view, I'd suggest loading up a "loading page" first, and do long polling on that page to the page you are loading WCF services with.

That way user can see that the server has responded, just that this particular page takes a while to load.