In today's article, we will deal with the measurement of information. All pictures, sounds and video clips that we see on monitor screens are nothing more than numbers. And these numbers can be measured, and, now, you will learn how to convert megabits to megabytes and megabytes to gigabytes.

If it is important for you to know how many mb in 1 GB or how many KB in 1 mb, then this article is for you. Most often, such data is needed by programmers who evaluate the volume occupied by their programs, but sometimes it does not interfere with ordinary users to estimate the size of downloaded or stored data.

In short, it is enough to know this:

1 byte = 8 bits

1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes

1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes

1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes

1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes

Common abbreviations: kilobyte=kb, megabyte=mb, gigabyte=gb.

Recently I received a question from my reader: "What is more kb or mb?". Hopefully now everyone knows the answer.

Information units in detail

In the information world, the decimal system of measurement, which is familiar to us, is not used, but binary. This means that one digit can take on a value not from 0 to 9, but from 0 to 1.

The simplest unit of information is 1 bit, it can be 0 or 1. But this value is very small for the modern amount of data, so bits are rarely used. Bytes are more commonly used, 1 byte is equal to 8 bits and can take a value from 0 to 15 (hexadecimal). True, instead of numbers 10-15, letters from A to F are used.

But even these volumes of data are small, therefore, the prefixes familiar to everyone are used: kilo- (thousand), mega- (million), giga- (billion).

It is worth noting that in the information world, a kilobyte is not equal to 1000 bytes, but 1024. And if you want to know how many kilobytes are in a megabyte, then you will also get the number 1024. When asked how many megabytes are in a gigabyte, you will hear the same answer - 1024.

This is also determined by the feature of the binary system of calculus. If, when using tens, we get each new digit by multiplying by 10 (1, 10, 100, 1000, etc.), then in the binary system a new digit appears after multiplying by 2.

It looks like this:

2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024

A number consisting of 10 binary digits can have as few as 1024 values. This is more than 1000, but closest to the usual prefix kilo-. Mega- and giga and tera-are applied in a similar way.

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Today, the Internet is needed in every home no less than water or electricity. And in every city there are a lot of companies or small firms that can provide people with access to the Internet.

The user can choose any package for using the Internet from a maximum of 100 Mbps to a low speed, for example, 512 kbps. How to choose the right speed and the right Internet provider for yourself?

Of course, the Internet speed must be chosen based on what you do online and how much you are willing to pay per month for Internet access. From my own experience, I want to say that the speed of 15 Mbps suits me quite well as a person who works on the network. Working on the Internet, I have 2 browsers enabled, and each has 20-30 tabs open, while problems arise more from the computer side (for working with large quantity tabs need a lot of RAM and a powerful processor) than from the side of the speed of the Internet. The only moment when you have to wait a bit is the moment the browser is first launched, when all tabs are loaded at the same time, but usually it takes no more than a minute.

1. What do internet speed values ​​mean

Many users confuse Internet speed values ​​​​thinking that 15Mb / s is 15 megabytes per second. In fact, 15Mb / s is 15 megabits per second, which is 8 times less than megabytes and at the output we will get about 2 megabytes of download speed for files and pages. If you usually download movies for viewing with a size of 1500 Mb, then at a speed of 15 Mbps the movie will be downloaded in 12-13 minutes.

We watch a lot or a little of your Internet speed

• The speed is 512 kbps 512 / 8 = 64 kbps (this speed is not enough to watch online video);
• The speed is 4 Mbps 4 / 8 = 0.5 MB / s or 512 kB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 480p);
• The speed is 6 Mbps 6 / 8 = 0.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 720p);
• The speed is 16 Mbps 16 / 8 = 2 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 2K);
• The speed is 30 Mbps 30 / 8 = 3.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 4K);
• The speed is 60 Mbps 60 / 8 = 7.5 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
• The speed is 70 Mbps 60 / 8 = 8.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
• The speed is 100 Mbps 100 / 8 = 12.5 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality).

Many connecting the Internet are worried about the possibility of watching online video, let's see what kind of traffic movies with different quality need.

2. Internet speed required to watch online video

And here you will find out a lot or a little of your speed for watching online videos with different quality formats.

Broadcast type	Video bitrate	Audio bitrate (stereo)	Traffic Mb/s (megabytes per second)
Ultra HD 4K	25-40 Mbps	384 kbps	from 2.6
1440p (2K)	10 Mbps	384 kbps	1,2935
1080p	8000 kbps	384 kbps	1,0435
720p	5000 kbps	384 kbps	0,6685
480p	2500 kbps	128 kbps	0,3285
360p	1000 kbps	128 kbps	0,141

We see that all the most popular formats are reproduced without problems with an Internet speed of 15 Mbps. But to watch video in 2160p (4K) format, you need at least 50-60 Mbps. but there is one BUT. I don’t think that many servers will be able to distribute video of this quality while maintaining such a speed, so if you connect the Internet at 100 Mbps, you won’t be able to watch online video in 4K.

3. Internet speed for online games

When connecting home Internet, every gamer wants to be 100% sure that his Internet speed will be enough to play his favorite game. But as it turns out, online games are not at all demanding on the speed of the Internet. Consider what speed popular online games require:

1. DOTA 2 - 512 kbps
2. World of Warcraft - 512 kbps
3. GTA online - 512 kbps.
4. World of Tanks (WoT) - 256-512 kbps.
5. Panzar - 512 kbps
6. Counter Strike - 256-512 kbps

Important! The quality of your game online is more dependent not on the speed of the Internet, but on the quality of the channel itself. For example, if you (or your provider) receive Internet via satellite, then no matter what package you use, the ping in the game will be much higher than that of a wired channel with a lower speed.

4. Why do you need Internet more than 30 Mbps.

In exceptional cases, I might recommend using a faster connection of 50 Mbps or more. Not many people will be able to provide such a speed in full, the company "Internet to Home" is not the first year on this market and it inspires confidence, the more important is the stability of the connection, and I want to believe that they are on top here. A high Internet connection speed may be necessary when working with large amounts of data (downloading and uploading them from the network). Perhaps you are a fan of watching movies in excellent quality, or you download large games every day, or upload videos or work files of large volumes to the Internet. To check the connection speed, you can use various online services, and to optimize the work you need to run.

By the way, speeds of 3 Mbps and below usually make surfing the net a little unpleasant, not all online video sites work well, and downloading files is generally not happy.

Be that as it may, there are plenty to choose from in the Internet services market today. Sometimes, in addition to global providers, the Internet is offered by local firms, and often the level of their service is also on top. The cost of services in such firms is of course much lower than that of large companies, but as a rule, the coverage of such firms is quite insignificant, usually within a district or two.

The terms denoting the speed of the Internet are extremely difficult to understand for a person who is far from this topic. For example, a provider offers the service of providing Internet at a speed of 1 Mbps, and you don’t know whether it’s a lot or a little. Let's figure out what it is - mbps, and how the speed of an Internet connection is generally measured.

Abbreviation decoding

"mbps" ( mbit per second) is a megabit per second. It is in these units that the connection speed is most often measured. All providers in their advertisements indicate the speed in megabits per second, so we should deal with these values.

How much is 1 mbps?

To begin with, we note that 1 bit is the smallest unit for measuring the amount of information. Along with a bit, people often use a byte, forgetting that these two concepts are completely different. Sometimes they say "byte" when they mean "bit" and vice versa. Therefore, it is worth considering this issue in more detail.

So, 1 bit is the smallest unit of measurement. 8 bits equals one byte, 16 bits equals two bytes, and so on. That is, you just need to remember that a byte is always 8 times larger than a bit.

Given that both units are very small, in most cases they use the prefixes "mega", "kilo" and "giga". What these prefixes mean, you should know from the school course. But if you forgot, then it is worth recalling:

1. "Kilo" is multiplication by 1000. 1 kilobit is equal to 1000 bits, 1 kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes.
2. "Mega" - multiplication by 1,000,000. 1 megabit is equal to 1,000 kilobits (or 1,000,000 bits), 1 megabyte is equal to 1024 kilobytes.
3. "Giga" - multiplied by 1,000,000,000. equals 1,000 megabits (or 1,000,000,000 bits), 1 gigabyte is equal to 1024 megabytes.

In simple words, the connection speed is the speed of information sent and received by the computer in one unit of time (per second). If your internet connection speed is 1 mbps, what does that mean? In this case, it says that your Internet speed is 1 megabit per second, or 1,000 kilobits/second.

How much is this

Many users believe that mbps is a lot. Actually it is not. Modern networks are so advanced that, given their capabilities, 1 mbps is nothing at all. Let's give a calculation of this speed using the example of downloading files from the Internet.

We take into account that mbps is megabits per second. Divide the value of 1 by 8 and get megabytes. Total 1/8=0.125 megabytes/second. If we want to download music from the Internet, then, provided that one track "weighs" 3 megabytes (usually tracks "weigh" that much), we can download it in 24 seconds. It's easy to calculate: 3 megabytes (the weight of one track) must be divided by 0.125 megabytes / second (our speed). The result is 24 seconds.

But that only applies to normal songs. What if you want to download a 1.5 GB movie? Let's count:

• 1500 (megabytes) : 0.125 (megabytes per second) = 12,000 (seconds).

Convert seconds to minutes:

• 12,000: 60 = 200 minutes or 3.33 hours.

Thus, with an Internet speed of 1 mbps, we can download a 1.5 GB movie in 3.33 hours. Here, judge for yourself whether it is long or not.

Given the fact that in large cities Internet providers offer Internet speeds of up to 100 mbps, we could download a movie with the same volume in just 2 minutes, not 200. That is, 100 times faster. Based on this, we can conclude that mbps is a low speed.

However, everything is relative. In some remote village, where it is generally difficult to catch even a GSM network, having Internet at such a speed is cool. However, in a large metropolis with huge competition between providers and mobile operators, there cannot be such a weak Internet connection.

Conclusion

Now you know how to determine the speed of the Internet, and you can understand a little about these units of measurement. Of course, getting confused in them is a piece of cake, but the main thing to remember is that a bit is an eighth of a byte. And the prefixes "kilo", "mega" and "giga" only add three, six or nine zeros, respectively. If you understand this, then everything falls into place.

As more and more of our daily entertainment is connected to the Internet, its speed has become a very important factor. In a world where people can legally download movies and watch TV shows from their PCs, users don't want to sit around and wait. Because of this, when buying a new broadband package, users are eager to know how fast the connection will be established. Unfortunately, there is a small puzzle, which is the problem of recognizing between megabits and megabytes.

Megabits and Megabytes

Suppose you are interested in getting a new internet service.
You're looking at the speeds offered in a package that advertises "up to 50Mbps". If you purchase this package, do you think what will be your download speed?

It's easy to assume that "Mbps" means "megabytes per second" and that if you include this package, you'll be able to download files at 50MB per second. However, please read the following ad carefully.

The lower "b" in this example is very important because it shows that we are talking not about 50 megabytes per second. This internet speed is actually advertised at 50 megabits per second, which is quite different!

"Real" speed

So, if we're not going to download at 50 megabytes per second, what will bring you 50 MB/s? To answer this question, we need to look at megabits and megabytes. To do this, it's easier for us to remove the "mega" in both words and compare the difference between a bit and a byte. A byte is made up of 8 bits, so we can say that a byte is 8 times larger than a bit, or mathematically, 1 byte = 8 bits.

If we use this information in our megabits and megabytes, then we can see that a megabyte is 8 times larger than a megabit, or 1 megabyte = 8 megabits.

Now that we know this, we can determine the speed in megabytes, at 50 megabits per second.

Given that there are 8 bits in a byte, we can take a value of 50 Mbps and divide it by eight. This gives us 6.25 which means we will be downloading at 6.25 megabytes per second. This is much slower than we thought!

That is why it is so important to understand the difference between megabits and megabytes.

What looks like a great deal suddenly becomes eight times worse after the deal is signed. If you want to know if a company uses megabits or megabytes, it's easy to do. Just remember that megabits use a small "b" (MB/s) while megabytes use a "B" (MB/s).

Why use beats? Why not bytes?

Why do we use beats in the first place? Wouldn't it be much easier if companies just advertised their speeds in megabytes and weren't misleading?

From a marketing point of view, it is more profitable to attract customers using megabits (50 Mb / s looks more impressive than 6.25 Mb / s). However, the most reasonable explanation is that network transfer speed is always measured: bytes are usually used when we calculate capacity and size (500 GB hard drive, 10 MB file), and bits are used when we discuss how fast a connection is ( 50 Mb/s, Internet).

In fact, we've been measuring Internet speed in bits since the first modems were invented over half a century ago! It was obvious at the time, people weren't worried about watching their favorite TV shows on Netflix, but were just thinking about the speed at which one device connected to another. So when an ISP tells you the speed in Mb/s, they may just be using a standard left over from the invention of modems.

Why is the speed not guaranteed?

Even after all these calculations and determining the download speed, it may not be ideal. If you look closely, you will notice that service providers advertise their connections as "before". This is due to many factors: distance to the provider; the number of people using the Internet at one time; how well the provider maintains its services. In short, this means you don't always get the speed you pay for.

For streaming movies on the Internet, such as Netflix, your knowledge of how to improve the speed of your Internet experience can help.

A little hint

When looking for a new internet service, it can be difficult to determine what the internet service providers are actually selling you. Confusing at first glance, the question is about megabits and megabytes, which is easy to understand. Just remember that 1 megabyte is equal to 8 megabits, and you will no longer worry about Internet speed.

Question from user

Hello.

Please tell me, I have an Internet channel of 15/30 Mbps, files in uTorrent are downloaded at a speed of (approximately) 2-3 MB/s. How can I compare the speed, is my ISP cheating me? How many megabytes should be at a speed of 30 megabits / s? Confused by the numbers...

Good day!

A similar question is very popular, they ask it in different interpretations (sometimes, very menacingly, as if someone had deceived someone). The bottom line is that most users confuse different units : like grams and pounds (also Megabit and Megabyte) ...

In general, to solve this problem, you will have to resort to a small digression to the computer science course, but I will try not to be boring ☺. Also in the article along the way I will analyze all the questions regarding this topic (about speed in torrent clients, about MB / s and Mbps).

Note

Educational program on Internet speed

And so, with ANY Internet provider(at least, I personally have not seen others) Internet connection speed is indicated in Megabit/s(moreover, pay attention to the prefix "BEFORE"- no one guarantees that your speed will always be constant; it's impossible).

In any torrent program(in the same uTorrent), by default, the download speed is displayed in MB / s (Megabytes per second). That is, I am leading to the fact that Megabytes and Megabits are different values.

Usually, the declared speed in the tariff of your ISP in Mbps divided by 8 to get the speed that uTorrent (or its analogues) will show you in MB/s (but see more on this below, there are nuances ☺).

For example, the rate of the Internet provider for which the question was asked is 15 Mbps. Let's try to translate it into a normal way ...

Important! (from the computer science course)

The computer does not understand numbers, only two values ​​​​are important for it: there is a signal or there is no signal (i.e. " 0 " or " 1 "). These are either yes or no - that is, "0" or "1" is called " Bit" (the smallest unit of information).

In order to be able to write some letter or number, one unit or zero will obviously not be enough (it definitely won’t be enough for the whole alphabet). It has been calculated to encode all the necessary letters, numbers, etc. - a sequence of 8 Bit.

For example, the English capital "A" code looks like this - 01000001 .

And so the code for the number "1" is 00110001.

These ones 8 Bits = 1 Byte(i.e. 1 Byte is the minimum data element).

About prefixes (and derivatives):

• 1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes (well, or 8 * 1024 Bits)
• 1 Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes (or KB/KB)
• 1 Gigabyte = 1024 Megabytes (or MB/MB)
• 1 Terabyte = 1024 Gigabytes (or GB/GB)

Mathematics:

1. One megabit is equal to 0.125 megabytes.
2. To achieve a transfer rate of 1 megabytes per second, you will need a network connection with a speed of 8 megabits per second.

In practice, usually, they do not resort to such calculations, everything is made simpler. The declared speed of 15 Mbit / s is simply divided by 8 (and ~ 5-7% is subtracted from this number for the transfer of service information, network load, etc.). The resulting number will be considered normal speed (an approximate calculation is shown below).

15 Mbps / 8 = 1.875 Mbps

1.875 MB/s * 0.95 = 1.78 MB/s

In addition, I would not discount the load on the ISP network during peak hours: in the evenings or on weekends (when a large number of people use the network). This can also seriously affect access speed.

Thus, if you are connected to the Internet at a rate of 15 Mbps, and your download speed in the torrent program shows about 2 MB / s - everything is very good with your channel and Internet provider ☺. Usually, the speed is less than declared (this is my next question, a couple of lines below) ...

Typical question. Why is the connection speed 50-100 Mbps, but the download speed is very low: 1-2 MB/s? Blame the ISP? After all, even according to approximate estimates, it should be at least 5-6 MB / s ...

I'll try to break it down point by point:

1. firstly, if you carefully look at the contract with the Internet provider, you will notice that you were promised access speed "UP TO 100 Mbps" ;
2. secondly, in addition to your access speed, very great importance has that where are you downloading the file(s) from. Let's say if that computer (from which you are downloading a file) is connected via low-speed access, say 8 Mbps - then your download speed from it at 1 MB / s is, in fact, the maximum! Those. try to start downloading the file from other servers (torrent trackers);
3. thirdly, you may already have some kind of the program is downloading something else. Yes, the same Windows can download updates (if, in addition to a PC, you have a laptop, smartphone, etc. devices connected to the same network channel - look at what they are doing ...). In general, check what your Internet channel is loaded with;
4. it is possible that in the evening hours (when the load on the Internet provider increases) - there are "drawdowns" (you are not the only one who decided to download something interesting at that time ☺);
5. If you are connected through a router - check it too. It often happens that inexpensive models cut speed (sometimes they just reboot), in general, they simply cannot cope with the load ...
6. check driver for your network card(for example, on the same Wi-Fi adapter). I have encountered the situation several times: after the network card (the driver for the network adapter in 90% is installed by Windows itself when it is installed), the speed of access increased significantly! The default drivers that come with Windows are not a panacea...

However, I do not rule out that your Internet provider (with old equipment, clearly overpriced tariffs that are only theoretically available on paper) may be the culprit for the low access speed. Just to start with, I wanted to pay attention to the above points ...

Another typical question. Why then indicate the speed when connecting in Mbps, when all users are guided by MB / s (and in programs it is indicated in MB / s)?

There are two points:

1. when transferring information, not only the file itself is transmitted, but also other service information (some of which is less than a byte). Therefore, it is logical (and indeed, historically so) that the connection speed is measured and indicated in Mbps.
2. the higher the number, the stronger the ad! Marketing has not been canceled either. Many people, they are quite far from network technologies, and seeing that somewhere the number is higher, they will go there and connect to the network.

Personally, my opinion: for example, it would be nice if providers indicated next to Mbit / s the real data download speed that the user will see in the same uTorrent. Thus, both the wolves are fed and the sheep are safe ☺.

By the way, to everyone who is dissatisfied with their speed of access to the Internet - I recommend that you read this article.: .

Suggestions on the subject are welcome...