Should I pay to my ISP for home networking?

[Nick]

I would like to set up home networking. Should I check with my ISP before doing so? Some say I should pay a nominal fee if I want to share broadband with more than one computer?

Can anyone throw light on this point?

[JenniP]

Have a look at your Broadband contract, but on the whole if your router is doing NATing, they will normally not notice anyway.

Personally I would say network away, after all with the rise of multi computer households and games consoles like the XBox 360 and PS3 that connect to the internet I don't think the ISPs can really complain. After all you cant use any more bandwidth than your pipe allows can you?

Jen

[attagirl]

I think that when you are paying for service for you home you are paying for any computer your home has. I think that if they expect you to pay for each and every computer in your home, then you are really not getting the service you are paying for. If the payment is for a connection to the home it should include all computers within the home.

[harvcr]

I agree with attagirl. You are already paying the company for the service and I don't think you should pay extra if you want to have a home network since it should be included.
Change providers!

[Smash]

Sounds strange they ask for a payment, and they wouldn't be able to tell anyway.

Like JenniP says, a NAT network sends all traffic though one single 'gateway' anyway (the router/modem).

The only issue they have is when you run a publicly accessible server (why upload speeds are always less than download speeds).

[ceprateek]

No you can have some local guy to do networking for you and networking is easy and you can read some tutorial and do it.