system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do ISP's limit the speeds I get?
gpt
their equipment drops packets that cannot be sent within the limits of the contract for your connection.

network routing works by a store and forward principle. the packet is read into the memory of the router
and then either discarded and overwritten or read from memory and sent along the cable.

the software that runs on the router makes these decisions. These routers have a traffic shaping module that can be configured for the desired behavior, for example a bandwidth limit and it will either forward or drop packets so as to comply with the policy it has been configured with.