One way of thinking about a data cap is just a bandwidth limitation measured over a long period. Bandwidth cannot be measured instantaneously, it has to be mea

One way of thinking about a data cap is just a bandwidth limitation measured over a long period. Bandwidth cannot be measured instantaneously, it has to be measured over some period of time. I'm not sure what the normal period ISPs use is, but maybe it's 0.1 seconds. Then if someone has a 100 Mbps download connection and a 1 TB monthly download data cap, that person effectively has 2 bandwidth limits: a limit of 100Mbps when measured over 0.1 seconds, and a limit of 3.086Mbps when measured over 1 month. Or you could say it's a 3.086Mbps connection that allows bursting up to 100Mbps as long as the bursts are paid back with downtime.