download limit

Most broadband packages seem to have a download limit, what is this and how can you find out how much you've downloaded to date.
Do you download simply by viewing a webpage, I listen to 2fm, spin1038 over the internet while working, is this downloading or do you have to be recording what you're listening to (which I sometimes do for Dunphy's show in the morning so I can listen to it later).

Looking at a webpage downloads it to a Temp folder on your machine (same with photos) but the size is quite small, so you shouldn't have problems going over the limit. Downloading music (mp3s and movies) usually uses much much more.

Not sure about listening to online radio, I was wondering the same - I'm pretty sure you ar still downloading (transfering data) but not sure how much. I'm with BT free broadband trial and was planning to give them a call and ask them.

Hope that helps a bit,
SF

Any downstream (e.g. from internet to your PC) traffic will contribute towards your download total. Basically most activity (in particular web browsing and related multimedia activity including listening to web streams of radio broadcasts in real time or saving them first and listeining to them later) involves the sending of relatively small amounts of data from your PC to the internet and then the download of significantly larger amounts of data from the internet to your PC. These data transfers are collated by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to check if/when your download or upload caps are exceeded and when incremental charging should take place. See [broken link removed] for a summary of the download and upload caps applicable to most ISP packages. Where such data transfer caps apply the ISP will provide some web based utility for you to check your current status.

Thanks for the link clubman, although having checked further on the esatbt website it looks like the data on this page is quite out of date, but at least you've pointed me in the right direction.

Yeah - the IrelandOffline site may not be 100% up to date. They ask people to notify them of errors but when I did this a few times a while back they didn't bother to acknowledge my emails let alone fix the site.