Why does the DSL usage page show very small amounts of usage for times when my computer is powered off?
• Data is flowing through your DSL link. • The technology used to deliver DSL service will periodically check to see if your modem is there. AP&T’s DSL equipment communicates with the DSL modem at your home or business in order to determine the status of your link. This overhead is part of the DSL technology and is required for AP&T to deliver DSL service. • Computers on the Internet that may have viruses or malicious users could be sending data to your DSL modem. This data does not get passed to your computer because it is stopped by the DSL modem; however it still travels though your DSL link. These things cannot be filtered out of your DSL usage. Doing so would require AP&T to classify different types of data and to determine whether it should be considered billable or not. Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, it would be impossible to classify the data in this manner. The industry standard for ISPs is to count usage based on the pure number of bits that move from the Inte
