Why do the say Mbits/sec instead of MBytes?

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Rob94hawk

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It pisses me off when companies use Mbits. What's the damn conversion for Mbps to MBps?

I want to know if Verizon's Fios @ 20Mbps/5Mbps is faster than Optimum online.

My current dwnload spead is 5506kbps and 1657kbps up. I guess that's 5.5MBps/1.6MBps?

Thanx
 
Rob94hawk said:
It pisses me off when companies use Mbits. What's the damn conversion for Mbps to MBps?

I want to know if Verizon's Fios @ 20Mbps/5Mbps is faster than Optimum online.

My current dwnload spead is 5506kbps and 1657kbps up. I guess that's 5.5MBps/1.6MBps?

Thanx
Click to expand...

B is byte.

b is bit.

8 bits = 1 byte.

However, in terms of internet connection speed, you're almost always dealing with bits per second, not bytes (unless you're looking at upload or download speeds when using an internet browser or FTP client).

5506 Kbps = 5.5 Mbps

1657 Kbps = 1.7 Mbps

Obviously, FIOS is significantly faster than Optimum.
 
Why does that piss you off? That is the proper way to state the line speed of a network connection. Mbps is a measure of bandwidth vs MBps which is a measure of data transfer to and from a storage device such as a computer hard drive.
 
PHUNBALL said:
Why does that piss you off? That is the proper way to state the line speed of a network connection. Mbps is a measure of bandwidth vs MBps which is a measure of data transfer to and from a storage device such as a computer hard drive.
Click to expand...
Well, that's the common usage, but either is commonly used for both.

For instance, when downloading a file, Internet Explorer expresses the download speed in KBps. 1 KBps = 8 Kb/s since 1 Byte = 8 bits.

Also, guess what the transfer rate of Firewire 400 is. It's 400 Mbps. That's 50 MBps.
 
Well the larger number always sounds better right?


Kinda like car sales, numbers looks good (hauling weight, mpg, etc) and the cost looks low (after rebates and incentives)... when in reality it's far from realistic.
 
When Comcrap first came into my area, they were advertising in Megabytes/sec. (MB/sec) I wish I would have kept the flyer. This was when they first became a company. I ordered their service, and when they couldn't provide me with the blazing 1500MBps speed, I dropped their service and wiggled my way out of the early termination fee because they had false advertising. :p
 
kumquat said:
8 bytes = 1 bit.
Click to expand...
Strike that, reverse it: 8 bits = 1 Byte. 4 bits = 1 Nibble ( I shit you not ).

OP: The numbers as listed would indicate that Verizon is the better deal;

20Mbps compared to 5.506Mbps ( according to your numbers and notations )
5Mbps compared to 1.6Mbps ( again, according to your numbers and notations )

Now, if you put the incorrect notation there, then let us know.
 
kumquat said:
B is byte.

b is bit.

8 bytes = 1 bit.
Click to expand...
That's not correct; eight bits is one byte.

The reason the rates are reported in bits per second is that we don't know the number of bits that make up a byte when transmitted over the line. There might be stop bits, parity bits, or run-length compression involved. These factors might increase the number of bits used (eg, using 10 bits to transmit one eight-bit byte) or might make the number of bits used varaible per byte (when compression is involved).
 
When calculating the bandwidth of a medium, you are determining how many bits can fit on the medium at one time, and this may not be evenly divisible into bytes.
 
It only pisses me off when someone who uses bits as bytes and doesn't even know the difference between b and capital B.

So when I might say I get 215 kB up a second and then some idiot comes in and says "dude thats pathetic I get 12324234324 bits a second dude even my dial up is faster" :rolleyes:

yes... its sarcasm. Don't even try to divide the made up figure by eight.

Yes I understand that things are transmitted bit by bit. But guess what? When you go to File explorer and you see some files, do you measure them by megabytes or by fucking megabits? Start getting practical. I know an ISP would love to shove large numbers in your face but thats like some car commercial saying this car can hit some xxx KPH top speed.
 
Being practical has nothing to do with it. You measure line speed in bits, not bytes, and that's just the way it is, like it or not.

So, technically speaking the "idiot" is correct and you are not when you are speaking of line speed.

Networks and networking equipment specs are measured in bits for a reason...
 
Rob94hawk said:
It pisses me off when companies use Mbits. What's the damn conversion for Mbps to MBps?
Click to expand...

What really pisses me off, is people using Kibps, expressed as something like 4.403Kibps (four thousand four hundred and three). Im not sure if Kibps means kibble-bits per second... If the kibblebits notation wasnt enough, the interchanging of the comma and period really get me fired up. Anyways...

If youve ever been around digital circuits much, or know a few things about digital circuits/logic circuits, everything is in bits (zeros and ones), which represents a state of true or false. It makes far more sense to measure a digital circuits rate in bits per second, because its sending bits... and your time frame is how many in one second. Im just thankful nobody is trying to measure anything else in another unit such as nibbles, or some kind of 3 bit unit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit

Hopefully I havent manged up my explanation too badly.
 
MooCow said:
It only pisses me off when someone who uses bits as bytes and doesn't even know the difference between b and capital B.

So when I might say I get 215 kB up a second and then some idiot comes in and says "dude thats pathetic I get 12324234324 bits a second dude even my dial up is faster" :rolleyes:

yes... its sarcasm. Don't even try to divide the made up figure by eight.

Yes I understand that things are transmitted bit by bit. But guess what? When you go to File explorer and you see some files, do you measure them by megabytes or by fucking megabits? Start getting practical. I know an ISP would love to shove large numbers in your face but that’s like some car commercial saying this car can hit some xxx KPH top speed.
Click to expand...

actually this is standard practice because a byte may not be 8 bits when transmitted over a network

1 BYTE != 8 bits all the time

also KPH is kinda wrong a more correct term would include km/h or kmPh as the k is a prefix and does not define the measurement system (and it is case sensitive)

a valid comparison would be a car company saying that this car does so many m/h
but even this is not truly accurate as you can easily convert m/h to km/h but you cannot convert b/s to B/s





also the metre is just a lot better than the imperial system :)
 
MooCow said:
I know an ISP would love to shove large numbers in your face but thats like some car commercial saying this car can hit some xxx KPH top speed.
Click to expand...
I feel that your analogy is lacking. In a large part of the world, the top speed is given in km/h not mph.
 
I think we should all adopt the universal standard of LoC/hour.
 
MooCow said:
It only pisses me off when someone who uses bits as bytes and doesn't even know the difference between b and capital B.
Click to expand...

Lots of companies do that, especially those who are quite seasoned in the art of Engrish.
 
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