broadband usage limits

[starrs]

we recently converted to broadband and were told by wanadoo that there is a monthly usage limit which is fair enough. sometimes after we have finished surfing the net we forget to disconnect and leave the internet connected, so can anyone tell me if this time when the internet is connected counts towards our monthly limit or is it only the time taken actually surfing the net. hope this is clear, any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[LeMarchand]

Yes it will be counted, but depending on what page you leave open you are unlikely to be using much, if any, of your allowance.

Depending on your allowance, if all you are doing is net surfing rather than downloading a lot of stuff, it is unlikely that this should bother you.

If you are worried about your limit, Google for "bandwidth monitor", there should be some free apps to help you monitor your usage. The one I use is an older version of the one at http://www.lp23.com/ , but the version I have was free while retaining much of the functionality of the now paid-for "Home" edition.

[starrs]

thanks for that. yes we only use it for net surfing so hopefully it wont be a problem but i will check on google. thanks.

[vehelpfulguy]

It depends if your limit is TIME based or DATA based.

With a TIME based system this will depend how long you are connected to the internet. 

With a DATA based system this will depend how much data you download from the internet.

With Broadband it is often DATA based (but check with Wanadoo).

I am not sure if you realise this but every time you look at a web page you actually download the web site text and all the pictures to your PC.

Because of the way the web pages are designed the text and pictures are quite small, but they do add up over time.

So every bit of text and picture you download is DATA, and it is this data you may have a lmit on.

If you are DATA based I would say that looking at web pages and doing some email is unlikely to exceed your DATA limit, but if you start downloading big files such as songs, film trailers, and so on, then you could soon reach your limit.   

[starrs]

thanks for the info. when wanadoo first contacted us i said we would only download music very rarely and therefore we could probably surf the net for between 8-10 hours per day which i thought was more than enough (or did he just say that to get us to sign up). i guess i should contact wanadoo as i assume they are keeping some sort of check on our usage but thanks to both of you for the info. i feel happier now that we are well within our limit.