When looking at different internet service plans it is easy to be overwhelmed by a lot of the technical jargon that is thrown around. If like many users, you are unsure what the difference in speeds on offer means, this guide is designed to take some of the difficulty out of understanding it.
Sometimes ISP’s will throw around different terms Kbps KBps, or Mbps and MBps.
The K and the M in those terms stand for Kilo or Mega (and respectively mean thousand or million), which indicates an amount of data transfer per second.
Kilo is the smaller unit of Mega, like a gram is the smaller unit of kilogram. That is to say it is possible to express any speed that is measured in Mega as Kilo. For example 9.9 Mbps is the same as 9,900 Kbps.
You will also notice however that one measure of speed uses the capital B in its notation whilst the other uses the small letter b. e.g. MBps and Mbps
So why use the same letter B in the acronym differently? What does that mean?
Well simply put when the capital B is used in the speed measure, the full form of MBps is megabytes per second. When the small letter b is used, there is a crucial difference; the term now means megabits per second.
So the size of the letter B, tells you whether the speed is being measured in bits or bytes.
What is the difference between a bit and a byte?
- Well the former is 8 times larger than the latter, that is to say if you express a speed in Megabits per second, dividing that speed by 8 will give you the speed in Megabytes per second
- A Megabit is eight times larger than a Megabyte.
- So if an ISP says it is offering speeds as fast as 24 MBps, what it is saying is that its download speed is 3 Mbps – most UK providers however use Mbps.
Why do you need to know this?
Well for a start, understanding the difference between the two measures of speed means there is less confusion.
If you sign up for a 24 MBps connection, and then download something, browsers and downloads often quote your speed in megabits per second rather than megabytes per second, and if you don’t know that there is a difference, then it can leave you feeling a little short changed or even ripped off.
Many ISP’s quote speeds in Megabytes per second, whilst most downloads and even speed tests calculate your speed in Megbits per second. Knowing how to convert from one speed measure to the other, means you know exactly what you are getting before you pay for it.
It’s like Miles per hour and Kilometers per hour or pounds and kilograms, and being able to tell the difference. If you couldn’t tell the difference between metric and imperial, then you would have a fairly difficult time functioning in the world.
If you bought a kilogram of flour for example, you would be a little bit miffed if all you got was a pound, and gratefully accepted it, simply because you saw the 1 and thought that two different measures of weight meant exactly the same thing.
That’s right, you can now get the