Megabits vs Megabytes

 

 

Source: highspeedinternet.com

People often confuse between Megabyte (MB) and Megabit (Mb) i.e., when people assume that a download speed of 1 Megabit per second (1Mbps) will allow them to download 1 Megabyte (MB) file in one second (MBps). This is totally wrong!!!

The acronym Mbps stands for megabits pers sconed, and is the measure of internet bandwidth. It is the download speed of your internet connection and the maximum download speed at which you can download files on your computer. Bits are tiny data units, with a megabit equal to one million of bits i.e., higher the number of bits, the better your internet speed is. It is abbreviated as Mbps, meaning megabits per second

The term MBps or (MB/s) stands for ‘megabytes’ and show how much data a storage device can transfer in a second. For example, SSD may record data it receives at 550MB/s.

Internet speed is measured in bits viz., bits, kilobits, megabits (note-all are written in lower case such as b, Kb, Mb respectively); while file size is measured in bytes viz., bytes, kilobytes, megabytes (note-all are written in upper case such as B, KB, MB respectively).

Since one byte is equal to eight bits, so a kilobyte is eight times as large as kilobit. For instance, if you want to figure out ‘how fast a file will download’, just multiply the file size in MegaBytes by eight to get Megabits. Then divide the file size in Megabits by your speed.

For example, the file that you are going to download is 300MB.

Then, convert MB to Mbps i.e., 300*8 = 2400Mb (megabit). Let’s say that your lease line speed is 300 Mbps, then to get your speed, 2400Mb/300Mbps=8 i.e., 8 seconds to download 300MB of file.

In another scenario, let’s say that you have 4Mbps of bandwidth. Thus, this has nothing to do with how fast your internet works i.e., nothing like a car where you can measure how fast it goes in a miles per hour (mph). Instead, internet speed is your allocated bandwidth. Bandwith is the amount of data that can be sent to you, usually measured in seconds. For example, 4Mbps would mean that 4Megabits of data is sent to you in a second. Therefore, to download 1MB of file in 1 second, the working is as follows:

1MB*8=8Megabits per second or 1Mbps. Thus, to download 1MB of file, you will need 8Mbps of connection.

To sum up, megabits per second (Mbps) are generally used to describe the speed of an internet connection, whereas megabytes (MB) is usually referred to the size of the file or storage space. One byte is made up of 8 bits, meaning, you will need to pay extra attention to which unit you are using.

NOTE-B represents Bytes while b represents bits.

Megabyte=MB

Megabit=Mb

Mega Bytes per second=MBps

Mega Bits per second=Mbps

1Megabyte=8 Megabit

1Megabyte=1024 Kilobyte (KB)

8Megabit=1024 Kilobyte

Therefore, 1 Megabit (Mb)=1024Kb=1024Kb/8=128Kilobyte (KB).

Also, if you have an internet connection with a consistent 1Mbps, it will be able to download a 1/8MB every second. So, if you are downloading 10 Megabyte of file through 1Mbps connection, it would take 80 seconds to download the file and not 10 seconds.

Megabits are used to measure wired and wireless speeds (Mbps). Megabytes are used to measure storage capacity and how fast storage devices transfer data (MB/s). Bytes are made up of eight bits, so to convert a value in bits to bytes (or Mbps to MBps, Gbps to GBps, etc.), simply divide the value by eight:

• 1,000 megabits per second ÷ 8 = 125 megabytes per second
• 250 megabytes per second x 8 = 2,000 megabits per second