Mbps, Kbps, bps, kb and mb, familiar or strange?

We are almost everyday connected with those units like Mbps, Kbps, bps, kb, mb and so on, cause it’s an era of www. However, what they really mean may be not clear to everyone.

Let’s talk about it. Firstly, Mbps, Milionbit pro second (1,000,000 bits/s); Kbps, Kilobit pro second (1,000bits/s); bps, bit pro second (bit/s). So, Milionbit=1,000Kilobit=1,000,000bit and thus 1Mbps=1,000,000bps. Amongst those above, bit, usually b for short, is unit of velocity in binary calculation, and in other hand, bps is unit to rule bandwidth, that is, binary bits transmitted per second.

Secondly, the unit shown in softs is velocity of Byte, B for short, that is transmitted by second: MB, Million Byte; KB, Kilo Byte and 1MB=1,024KB=1,024×1,024B, while 1B=8b. In this case, 1Mbps=1,000Kbps=1,000/8KBps=125KBps. So, when bandwith is 1M, the velocity of download can not exceed 125KB/s, thus, 2M(250KB/s), 3M(375KB/s) and so on.

Then how to convert between Byte and bit?  Let’s take 10kbps for example. 10kbps=10,000bps=0.01Mpbs. Now that velocity of data transmission is decimal while data store is binary. 1kbit/s =1,000bit/s (note difference from KB to kb), and the velocity of data transmission is bit/s(bps). In a word, when we want to make such a convertion, remember 1Byte=8bit(1B=8b) and it will be easy to understand.