You are right - this question has been asked many times

Doesn't matter, we are here to help.
1. CIC updates caps (when they have the time) to reflect how many "complete" applications they have received (I think this is regardless of whether the applications are judged to be eligible for further processing or not based on the verbiage they have used for the caps). Due to this reason, I also believe that's the reason why people who got their PER's even after that cap was reached at CIC. Funny but possible.
2. This is more tricky. Your NOC might not cap at all, if they receive 25500 applications in the other NOC's whichever comes first. For example, if 20 NOC's cap out (20,0000 applications)and the remaining NOC's are totalling upto 5,500, then they will stop processing 100% as the overall cap of 25,500 was reached. They will just be sending back everything without opening from that point on.
Regards,
Rick