Fair Access Policy

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Internet service providers often implement a so-called Fair Access Policy to prevent users of a broadband connection from overusing bandwidth. The limit is often on a daily or monthly basis, and varies substantially. It usually includes both the upload and download bandwidth (total bandwidth). If the limit is exceeded by the customer, either a warning may be given, or some sort of cap on the download/upload speed for a specified amount of time.

With the advent of P2P file sharing programs such as BitTorrent which allow the downloading (and uploading) of extremely large files (with some torrent downloads as large as 50 GB) customers may have to monitor their own bandwidth usage in order to prevent exceeding their limit.