Internet speed – MBps or Mbps – what's your's?
This blog intends to clarify on one basic myth that is out there about internet connection speeds.
When someone says “I have a 2 em bee pe ess connection, you see!” he probably doesn’t know what it really meant (well, that is the case with most of us!). Its perhaps hip to be mentioning that you’ve a faster connection than someone else. But tell you, these numbers are debased. Unless you know what it really means, you can easily get carried away.
Lets get to the bottom of it then. To start with lets see what MBps and Mbps really are and what they’re used to represent.
MBps – Mega Bytes per second
Mbps – Mega Bits per second
Bfore going any further, lets get to the basics:
1 Byte = 8 bits or say 1B = 8b. Please note the convention that the word Byte starts with a capital B, while byte is in all lower case.
Similarly, 1MBps = 8Mbps.
From the history if we can quickly recall, we have almost always mentioned digital data storage as Bytes(B), KiloBytes(KB), MegaBytes(MB) and so on. So, Byte is a unit normally used for digital storage space. For example a normal Mp3 file occupies 3.5 MB of memory on my hard drive. Well, that’s that.
But then, when networks came into usage, or rather, with the advent of the Internet, we began talking of network speeds – speeds at which data traveled over networks. This is when we measured the data in bits. We said, thousand bits per second. Thus came the Kbps, and then Mbps. This in Telecommunications lingo is called ‘bit rate’.
This gives us some insight, but there’s still a lot of confusion.
The following might help
The confusion is because we’ve often seen data transfer speeds both in terms of MBps as well as in terms of Mbps. For example most browsers show speeds in MBps while they download files.
Download speed as shown by Mozilla Firefox is in KBps or MBps.
The wired LAN or Ethernet is capable of speeds near 100 Mbps which means 1,000,000,00 bits per second. Or the same when expressed in MBps looks like 95.37 MBps.
We will see how to calculate this in a while. Before that, it would be better if we establish for ourselves which would be the unit/term (MBps or Mbps) we would want to use to measure data transfer speed in. I feel we should go by MBps. I came to this conclusion that MBps would be appropriate because, it is established that we would measure data on our computers in MBs (and not Mbs) and therefore, we would always be scouting to know ‘how much time would it take to download a file ‘x’ MB in size?’.
As an example, say I’ve to download a 3MB file, and I have a 1MBps connection. The download should ideally take 3 seconds. Even in the practical scenario (where several speed defining parameters are involved), it should not take not more than 4 to 5 seconds. This analogy seems easy as I have a 1MBps connection.
Say in case I have a 1Mbps connection, and I have to download a file of 3MB. How much time would it take? Lets calculate.
1Mbps = 1,000,000 bits ps
1Mbps = 125000 Bytes ps ( 1,000,000/8 )
1Mbps = 122.07 KB ps ( 125000/1024 )
1Mbps = 0.1192 MB ps ( 122.07/1024 )
i.e., my connection is capable of 0.1192 MB in one second. How long will it take to download 3MB? 25.2 seconds (3/0.1192). So, practically, it should take around half a minute to one minute for the download.
Isn’t calculating speeds in MBps better?
Next time you see an Mbps number, quickly divide it by8 to know the approximate MBps!
Hope this explanation made some meaning!
Thanks for reading 
[...] Internet connections come in Mbps, these files that we download, come in MB. Do you see the difference? This is unfortunate. We expect a biig number in front of the internet download speed units. We see the big numbers but in terms of smaller units. When someone says ‘I have a 2 em bee pe ess connection you see!’ he probably doesn’t know it 2Mbps, he probably thought it was 2MBps. Lets talk about this magic in a separate post. MBps or Mbps – What’s Your’s? [...]
hey… that’s really a good article man! I learned few new things from it!