Why bandwidth caps

If the user exceeds his monthly bandwidth cap, he may be subject to extra fees or his connection may be throttled for the remainder of the month. Fees are generally based on how many GBs of data the user consumed that exceeded his monthly allotment. In some cases, these can be quite high relative to the regular monthly cost of the Internet connection. In the early days of the Internet, usage was generally limited by time rather than bandwidth.

Users with dial-up connections were often limited to a certain number of hours each month until customer complaints about these restrictions led to unlimited access in many areas. As ISPs transitioned over to high-speed Internet services, they often advertised unlimited access for new users. Capping might be handled by the user's cable modem. Knowledge of capping has led to attempts at uncapping. When uncapping succeeds, the resulting data transfer rate is supposed to be extremely fast, but users who are caught are said to be banned permanently by broadband ISPs.

Uncapping is considered theft of service by ISPs. Sophistication is possible, and even required in limiting bandwidth. The simplest approach simply limits the data rate. The problem with the simplest approach is, a very active user could consume the maximum bandwidth continuously, theoretically imposing an excess burden on the ISP and possibly reducing the performance of other users. Channel capacity is a finite resource, using huge amounts of it can be deemed an abuse in countries with poor communications infrastructure.

Dial-up ISPs often published policies that tried to clarify the difference between "unmetered" and "unlimited". A more sophisticated approach is called "bursting", the administrator would specify a "peak rate limit", a lower "sustained rate limit", and a "credit limit". If you continuously saturate your connection, you will only get the sustained rate.

While you are idle or use less than the sustained rate, you accumulate a credit, in bytes, up to some limit. If you try to saturate your connection after idling, you will get the peak rate until your credit runs out, at which point you will again be running at the sustained rate limit.

The transition from peak rate to sustained rate could be abrupt, gradual, or even an arbitrarily designed curve. If you alternately idle and saturate, your long-term average data rate will never exceed the sustained rate limit, and your short-term data rate will never exceed the peak rate limit. This is known as a Token bucket. Other schemes or models are possible to regulate bursting. Data capping is common, though universally uncool. Being a member of a multi-person household with a penchant for streaming, uploading or downloading large files puts you at higher risk of getting your data capped.

Starry would never play you like that. Think of the internet like an island, with various ways to get to it — bridges, tunnels, ferries, chariots, hot air balloons — which are your internet service providers. They can charge tolls, have speed limits to access the island or not allow certain types of vehicles ahem, Netflix, YouTubeTV, Hulu to use the road.