jQuery and Ajax

jQuery and Ajax

Hi everyone,

I am trying to understand the whole Ajax functionality in a website and how jQuery handles
the calls.  

I have a page that needs to update values every 3 seconds as an example say a clock. Using
Ajax will only update that field, but there's no loading of the rest of the DOM, icons, images, etc..
 
Currently, I am using the following:

$(function()
{
  setInterval(function()
   {
$.get("index.html",function(data,textStatus, jqXHR)
{
           .....
          ...
          .
          say the clock field is in here
          ......
          ...
        },3000);

});

I am finding that this is producing a lot traffic, while inspecting it with WireShark software.
Can this be done in a better way (that produces less traffic)?