MBps
Taking the Confusion out of MBps (mega bytes per second)
Networking technology is often measured in terms of bandwidth or data rates expressed in bits per second. Virtually all of them, from phone line cables, wireless networks whether commercial or public, notably the internet, are specified and promoted capitalizing on their data transfer rates expressed in kbps and mbps, kilobits per second and megabits per second respectively. The newer network technologies offer broadband or high speed rates typically starting at 1.5 Mbps.
Taking Care of The Confusion.
A kilobit is 1,000 Bits or 1 Kb. A megabit is 1,000,000 bits, one million bits or 1 Mb. In reality though, they are not exactly in those numbers as they are merely rounded off. 1 Kb in electronic parlance is exactly 1,048 bits. While 1 Mb is 1,048,576 bits to be exact. But let’s not quibble over those excess numbers. The important thing to remember is their significant digits. Now, adding ps after Mb or Kb just means per second, so that you have an idea on how bits travel through the wire for every second. 1 Mbps means that 1million bits of data travel through the wire every second. And so on.
Another area of confusion is distinguishing between megabits (Mb) and megabytes (MB) kilobits (Kb) and kilobytes (KB) . The main contention is between bits (b) and bytes (B). You may already be getting the knack of it by looking at which letter is capitalized and what is not. A bit is the minimum single digit whether 0 or 1 in a digital stream. In contrast, a byte is a word length that contains 8 bits per byte. In short, a byte is 8 times that of a bit. Hence, 1 MB equals 8 times 1 Mb, or 8 million bits. It is therefore important to use a capital B when you are referring to bytes, and just use small case b when referring to plain bits.
To recap, which one is faster then, a 1 Mbps network or a 1 MBps network? The latter. It actually passes 8 Mbps.
