List of device bandwidths

This is a list of device bandwidths: the net bit rate (or, more informally, digital bandwidth) of some computer devices employing methods of data transport is quantified in units of kilobits per second (kbit/s), megabits per second (Mbit/s), or gigabits per second (Gbit/s) as appropriate. They are grouped by similar functionality, and then listed in order from lowest bandwidth to highest.

In addition, a common scale is used to better convey the magnitude of change to a non-technical person (for example: a 1.2 kbit/s telephone modem versus a 10,000 kbit/s DSL modem). Whether to use bit/s or byte/s (B/s) is often a matter of convention. The most commonly cited unit (bit/s or byte/s) is bolded. In general, parallel interfaces are quoted in byte/s (B/s), serial in bit/s. On devices like modems, bytes may be more than 8 bits long because they may be individually padded out with additional start and stop bits; the figures below will reflect this. Where channels use line codes, such as Ethernet, Serial ATA and PCI Express, quoted speeds are for the decoded signal.

Many of these figures are theoretical maxima, and various real-world considerations will generally keep the actual effective throughput much lower. The actual throughput achievable on Ethernet networks, for example (especially when heavily loaded or when running over substandard media), is debatable. The figures are also simplex speeds, which may conflict with the duplex speeds vendors sometimes use in promotional materials.

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Note: All of the figures listed here use metric (base-10) abbreviations:
* 1 kbit = 1,000 bits
* 1 kB = 1,000 bytes
* 1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes
* 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes
* 1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytesand so on.
(See binary prefixes for additional information on this convention.)

See also

* Bitrate
* Comparison of latency and throughput
* Sneakernet

Notes

External links

* [http://www.pixelbeat.org/speeds.html Interconnection Speeds Compared]
* [http://www.d-silence.com/feature.php?id=237 Need for Speed: Theoretical Bandwidth Comparison] — Contains a graph illustrating bandwidth speeds