Bandwidth Cap
A data cap, often referred to as a bandwidth cap, is a restriction imposed on data transfer over a network. In particular, it refers to policies imposed by an internet service provider to limit customers' usage of their services; typically, exceeding a data cap would require the subscriber to pay additional fees. Implementation of a data cap is sometimes termed a fair access policy, fair usage policy, or usage-based billing by ISPs. American ISPs have asserted that data caps are required to provide a "fair" service to their respective subscribers. The use of data caps has been criticized for becoming increasingly unnecessary, as decreasing infrastructure costs have made it cheaper for ISPs to increase the capacity of their networks to keep up with the demands of their users, rather than place arbitrary limits on usage. It has also been asserted that data caps are meant to help protect pay television providers that may also be owned by an ISP from competition with over-the-top st ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Internet Service Provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned. Internet services typically provided by ISPs can include internet access, internet transit, domain name registration, web hosting, and colocation. History The Internet (originally ARPAnet) was developed as a network between government research laboratories and participating departments of universities. Other companies and organizations joined by direct connection to the backbone, or by arrangements through other connected companies, sometimes using dialup tools such as UUCP. By the late 1980s, a process was set in place towards public, commercial use of the Internet. Some restrictions were removed by 1991, shortly after the introduction of the World Wide Web. During the 1980s, online s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sonic
Sonic or Sonics may refer to: Companies *Sonic Drive-In, an American drive-in, fast-food restaurant chain * Sonic (ISP), an Internet provider CLEC, serving more than 100 California communities * Sonic Foundry, a computer software company which develops programs for editing audio and video * Sonic Healthcare, a company that provides laboratory pathology and radiology services *Sonic Solutions, a company operating in digital-media markets *Sonic Team, a Japanese video game developer team *SONIC, a brand name of Sega, S.A. SONIC Arts and entertainment *''Sonic the Hedgehog'', a video game franchise licensed by Sega **Sonic the Hedgehog (character), the titular character of the ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' franchise ** ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' (1991), a 1991 platform video game ** ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' (TV series), a 1993 Italian-American animated television series ** ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' (OVA), a 1996 Japanese original video animation series ** ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' (2006), a 2006 p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Broadband
In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Internet access. The transmission medium can be coaxial cable, optical fiber, wireless Internet (radio), twisted pair cable, or satellite broadband, satellite. Originally used to mean 'using a wide-spread frequency' and for services that were analog at the lowest level, nowadays in the context of Internet access, 'broadband' is often used to mean any high-speed Internet access that is seemingly always 'on' and is faster than Dial-up Internet access, dial-up access over traditional plain old telephone service, analog or ISDN public switched telephone network, PSTN services. The ideal telecommunication network has the following characteristics: ''broadband'', ''multi-media'', ''multi-point'', ''multi-rate'' and economical implementation for a di ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Uncapping
Uncapping, in the context of cable modems, refers to a number of activities performed to alter an Internet service provider's modem settings. It is sometimes done for the sake of bandwidth (i.e. by buying a 512 kbit/s access modem and then altering it to 10 Mbit/s), pluggable interfaces (as by using more than one public ID), or any configurable options a DOCSIS modem can offer. However, uncapping may be considered an illegal activity, such as theft of service. Methods There are several methods used to uncap a cable modem, by hardware, software, tricks, alterations, and modifications. One of the most popular modifications is used on Motorola modems (such as the SB3100, SB4100, and SB4200 models); by spoofing the Internet service provider's TFTP server, the modem is made to accept a different configuration file than the one provided by the TFTP server. This configuration file tells the modem the download and upload caps it should enforce. An example of spoofing would ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bandwidth Management
Bandwidth management is the process of measuring and controlling the communications (traffic, packets) on a network link, to avoid filling the link to capacity or overfilling the link,https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/BWroundtable_report-1.0.pdf Internet Society on Bandwidth Management which would result in network congestion and poor performance of the network. Bandwidth is described by bit rate and measured in units of bits per second (bit/s) or bytes per second (B/s). Bandwidth management mechanisms and techniques Bandwidth management mechanisms may be used to further engineer performance and includes: * Traffic shaping (rate limiting): **Token bucket **Leaky bucket ** TCP rate control - artificially adjusting TCP window size as well as controlling the rate of ACKs being returned to the sender * Scheduling algorithms: ** Weighted fair queuing (WFQ) ** Class based weighted fair queuing ** Weighted round robin (WRR) ** Deficit weighted round robin (DWRR ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bandwidth (computing)
In computing, bandwidth is the maximum rate of data transfer across a given path. Bandwidth may be characterized as network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth. This definition of ''bandwidth'' is in contrast to the field of signal processing, wireless communications, modem data transmission, digital communications, and electronics, in which ''bandwidth'' is used to refer to the signal bandwidth measured in hertz, meaning the frequency range between lowest and highest attainable frequency while meeting a well-defined impairment level in signal power. The actual bit rate that can be achieved depends not only on the signal bandwidth but also on the noise on the channel. Network capacity The term ''bandwidth'' sometimes defines the net bit rate ''peak bit rate'', ''information rate'', or physical layer ''useful bit rate'', channel capacity, or the maximum throughput of a logical or physical communication path in a digital communication system. For example, bandwi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zero Rating
Zero-rating is the practice of providing Internet access without financial cost under certain conditions, such as by permitting access to only certain websites or by subsidizing the service with advertising or by exempting certain websites from the data allowance. Commentators discussing zero-rating present it often in the context of net neutrality. While most sources report that use of zero-rating is contrary to the principle of net neutrality, there are mixed opinions among advocates of net neutrality about the extent to which people can benefit from zero-rating programs while retaining net neutrality protections. Supporters of zero-rating argue that it enables consumers to make choices to access more data and leads to more people using online services, but critics believe zero-rating exploits the poor, creates opportunities for censorship, and disrupts the free market. Existing programs Internet services like Facebook, Wikipedia and Google have built special programs to use ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Artificial Scarcity
Artificial scarcity is scarcity of items despite the technology for production or the sufficient capacity for sharing. The most common causes are monopoly pricing structures, such as those enabled by laws that restrict competition or by high fixed costs in a particular marketplace. The inefficiency associated with artificial scarcity is formally known as a deadweight loss. Background In a capitalist system, an enterprise is judged to be successful and efficient if it is profitable. To obtain maximum profits, producers may restrict production rather than ensure the maximum utilisation of resources. This strategy of restricting production by firms in order to obtain profits in a capitalist system or mixed economy is known as creating artificial scarcity. Artificial scarcity essentially describes situations where the producers or owners of a good restrict its availability to others beyond what is strictly necessary. Ideas and information are prime examples of unnecessarily sc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Internet Association
The Internet Association (IA) was an American lobbying group based in Washington, D.C., which represented companies involved in the Internet. It was founded in 2012 by Michael Beckerman and several companies, including Google, Amazon, eBay, and Facebook, and was most recently headed by president and CEO K. Dane Snowden before shutting down. Prior to shuttering, IA lobbied Congress, the courts, foreign governments, federal and state agencies, and state and local governments on a range of regulatory issues. The group also published economic research on the internet economy. Group members had included companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Etsy, Expedia Group, Expedia, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix and PayPal. Internet Association had offices in Washington, DC; Albany, New York; Chicago, Illinois; Seattle, Washington; Sacramento, California; and London, UK. History On July 25, 2012, news outlets reported that several internet companies, including Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook, were f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Netflix
Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple languages. Launched in 2007, nearly a decade after Netflix, Inc. began its pioneering DVD-by-mail movie rental service, Netflix is the most-subscribed video on demand streaming media service, with 301.6 million paid memberships in more than 190 countries as of 2025. By 2022, "Netflix Original" productions accounted for half of its library in the United States and the namesake company had ventured into other categories, such as video game publishing of mobile games through its flagship service. As of 2025, Netflix is the 18th most-visited website in the world, with 21.18% of its traffic coming from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom at 6.01%, Canada at 4.94%, and Brazil at 4.24%. History Launch as a mail-based renta ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cord Cutting
In broadcast television, cord-cutting refers to the pattern of viewers, referred to as cord-cutters, cancelling their subscriptions to multichannel television services available over cable or satellite, dropping pay television channels or reducing the number of hours of subscription television viewed in response to competition from rival media available over the Internet. This content is either free or significantly cheaper than the same content provided via cable. As a market trend, a growing number of "cord cutters" do not pay for subscription television in favor of some combination of broadband Internet and IPTV, digital video recorders, digital terrestrial television and/or free-to-air satellite television broadcasts. A related group, the cord-nevers, have never used commercial cable for television service, relying on internet sources from the start. A number of purely internet television services, part of the wider IPTV concept, have emerged to cater to these groups. In the t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Suddenlink
Suddenlink was an American telecommunications subsidiary of Altice USA trading in cable television, broadband, IP telephony, home security, and advertising. Prior to its acquisition by Altice, the company was the seventh largest cable operator with 1.5 million residential and 90,000 business subscribers. After Altice acquired Cablevision Systems Corporation on November 30, 2016, Suddenlink was combined with Cablevision. Together with Optimum, the name used by Cablevision for its products, Altice USA became the United States' fourth largest cable operator with 4.6 million subscribers, and the sixth largest Pay TV service provider with 3.5 million subscribers. On August 1, 2022, Suddenlink rebranded into Optimum. History The predecessor to Suddenlink Communications was Cebridge Communications that was formed in September 2003 by its parent company Cequel III. Cequel III was formed in January 2002 by Jerry Kent, a former CEO for Charter Communications, Charter's co-founder How ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |