The present invention suggests the introduction of an additional protocol element for a preventive display of transmission costs in the case of Internet and on-line services, at least for the transmission of larger quantities of data, such as, for example FTP files, sent by the provider, which can, at least, contain the scope of the data in the pending transmission, as well as other price criteria, optionally, which is recognized as such by the nodes (routers) that are involved in the transmission, and which may be expanded by its own proportional transmission prices, such that, ultimately, in the recipient's PC, on the browser for example, an evaluation of the protocol element, with a display of the costs, accordingly, appears on the screen, after which the subscriber can institute a transmission or disrupt it and optionally, take additional measures, such as, for example, activating the automatic instigation of the transmission at a later, more favorable time from the standpoint of costs.In particular, the introduction of the protocol element for all pending transmissions of data, including, for example, HTML pages, makes sense as an option that affords protection against the senseless delivery of large numbers of illustrated pages, especially in cases of rapid Internet access.