I mean, in this universe we live in everything is limited somehow.
I do wish it was a word that had to be completely dropped from marketing/adverting.
For example there is not unlimited storage, hell the visible universe has a storage limit. There is not unlimited upload and download speed, and what if when you start using more space they started exponentially slowing the speed you could access the storage? Unlimited CPU time in processing your request? Unlimited execution slots to process your request? Unlimited queue size when processing your requests.
Hence everything turns into the mess of assumptions.
> I mean, in this universe we live in everything is limited somehow.
Yes, indeed, most relevant in this case probably "time" and "bandwidth", put together, even if you saturate the line for a month, they won't throttle you, so for all intents and purposes, the "data cap" is unlimited (or more precise; there is no data cap).
In almost all services this tends to get an asterisk that says "unless your usage interferes with other users" which in itself is poorly defined. But typically means once their system gets closer to its usage limit, you're the first to get booted off the service.
No ISP I've had in my adult life had such conditions, it truly is "Whatever you manage to do with the bandwidth we give you". I've done hundreds of TBs for months without any impact to my bandwidth (transferring ML datasets among other things), and I'm pretty sure a ISP in my country would break some law if they'd limit a typical broadband home connection based on data transfer quotas.
What? You are capped by bandwidth and time is its own limit. You are capped at the max bandwidth in your service contract multiplied by the length of the contract. A bandwidth cap has an implied data cap
The point is that you have access to a 100Mb/s connection, and your access to that connection is unlimited. It doesn't become a 10Mb/s connection at some point, and your access isn't cut off - there are no limits on your access.
Of course there are practical limits as you can't make your 100Mb/s connection into a gigabit one (ignoring that you can buy burstable in a datacenter, etc, etc).
Where unlimited falls down is when it refers to a endlessly consumable resource, like storage.
I mean, in this universe we live in everything is limited somehow.
I do wish it was a word that had to be completely dropped from marketing/adverting.
For example there is not unlimited storage, hell the visible universe has a storage limit. There is not unlimited upload and download speed, and what if when you start using more space they started exponentially slowing the speed you could access the storage? Unlimited CPU time in processing your request? Unlimited execution slots to process your request? Unlimited queue size when processing your requests.
Hence everything turns into the mess of assumptions.
> I mean, in this universe we live in everything is limited somehow.
Yes, indeed, most relevant in this case probably "time" and "bandwidth", put together, even if you saturate the line for a month, they won't throttle you, so for all intents and purposes, the "data cap" is unlimited (or more precise; there is no data cap).
In almost all services this tends to get an asterisk that says "unless your usage interferes with other users" which in itself is poorly defined. But typically means once their system gets closer to its usage limit, you're the first to get booted off the service.
No ISP I've had in my adult life had such conditions, it truly is "Whatever you manage to do with the bandwidth we give you". I've done hundreds of TBs for months without any impact to my bandwidth (transferring ML datasets among other things), and I'm pretty sure a ISP in my country would break some law if they'd limit a typical broadband home connection based on data transfer quotas.
What? You are capped by bandwidth and time is its own limit. You are capped at the max bandwidth in your service contract multiplied by the length of the contract. A bandwidth cap has an implied data cap
The point is that you have access to a 100Mb/s connection, and your access to that connection is unlimited. It doesn't become a 10Mb/s connection at some point, and your access isn't cut off - there are no limits on your access.
Of course there are practical limits as you can't make your 100Mb/s connection into a gigabit one (ignoring that you can buy burstable in a datacenter, etc, etc).
Where unlimited falls down is when it refers to a endlessly consumable resource, like storage.
Of course. You're always capped by rate. But you're not capped by the cumulative amount (other than as a function of rate and time).