- Data rate units
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In telecommunications, bit rate or data transfer rate is the average number of bits, characters, or blocks per unit time passing between equipment in a data transmission system. This is typically measured in multiples of the unit bit per second or byte per second.
Bit rates Decimal prefixes (SI) Name Symbol Multiple kilobit per second kbit/s 103 megabit per second Mbit/s 106 gigabit per second Gbit/s 109 terabit per second Tbit/s 1012 Binary prefixes (IEC 60027-2) kibibit per second Kibit/s 210 mebibit per second Mibit/s 220 gibibit per second Gibit/s 230 tebibit per second Tibit/s 240 Contents
Avoiding confusion
See also: Bit rate for the differences between gross bitrate and net bitrate and between throughput and goodput..To be as explicit as possible, both the prefix and the suffix of the unit must be known. For example, the abbreviation 2 Mb can actually be expanded in 2 different ways (mega- vs mebi- and -bit). The difference in the associated numbers can be significant:
Unit Bits Bits / 1,000,000 Mega-bit 1,000,000 1.0 Mebi-bit 1,048,576 1.05 Mega-byte 8,000,000 8.0 Mebi-byte 8,388,608 8.39 The table above shows an approximate 5% difference between the corresponding mega- and mebi- units with a 800% difference between -bit and -byte units. Explicitness in units is important because difference can become even larger across different prefix units).
Prefix: k vs Ki
k- stands for kilo, meaning 1,000, while Ki- stands for kilobinary ("kibi-"), meaning 1,024. The standardized binary prefixes such as Ki- were relatively recently introduced and still face low adoption. K- is often used to mean 1,024, especially in KB, the kilobyte.
Suffix: b vs B
b stands for bit and B stands for byte. In the context of data rate units, one byte refers to 8 bits. For example, when a 1 Mbps connection is advertised, it usually means that the maximum achievable download bandwidth is 1 megabit/s (million bits per second), which is actually 0.125 MB/s (megabyte per second), or about 0.1192 MiB/s (mebibyte per second).
Problems
In 1999, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) published Amendment 2 to "IEC 60027-2: Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2: Telecommunications and electronics." This standard, approved in 1998, introduced the prefixes kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, tebi-, pebi-, and exbi- to be used in specifying binary multiples of a quantity. The name is derived from the first two letters of the original SI prefixes followed by bi (short for binary). It also clarifies that the SI prefixes be used only to mean powers of 10 and never powers of 2.
The correct use for file, disk, and memory size is as follows:
Unit (SI) Bytes Unit (IEC 60027-2) Bytes Kilobyte (kB) 1,000 Kibibyte (KiB) 1,024 Megabyte (MB) 1,0002 Mebibyte (MiB) 1,0242 Gigabyte (GB) 1,0003 Gibibyte (GiB) 1,0243 Terabyte (TB) 1,0004 Tebibyte (TiB) 1,0244 Petabyte (PB) 1,0005 Pebibyte (PiB) 1,0245 Computer and technology industries have yet to adapt to these standards. When Microsoft Windows shows the size of a drive or a file, it uses powers of 1,024 but uses SI prefixes so that, for example, 28,735,078,400 bytes displays as 26.7 GB instead of either 28.7 GB, or 26.7 GiB.
The commonly advertised (formatted) capacity of the 3.5-inch floppy disk was 1.44 MB but was actually 1,440 KiB or 1.44 × 1,000 × 1,024 bytes, giving either 1.41 MiB or 1.47 MB.
On September 18, 2003, Reuters reported that Apple, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba were being sued in a class-action law-suit in the Los Angeles Superior Court for "deceiving" buyers as to the true capacity of those companies' hard drives. This of course was due to ambiguity of GB when used by software and hardware vendors.
Decimal multiples of bits
Kilobit per second
A kilobit per second (kbit/s, kb/s, or kbps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 1000 bits per second or
- 125 bytes per second.
Megabit per second
A megabit per second (Mbit/s, Mb/s, or Mbps; not to be confused with mbit/s which means, literally, millibit per second) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 1,000,000 bits per second or
- 1,000 kilobits per second or
- 125,000 bytes per second.
Gigabit per second
A gigabit per second (Gbit/s, Gb/s, or Gbps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 1,000 megabits per second or
- 1,000,000 kilobits per second or
- 1,000,000,000 bits per second or
- 125,000,000 bytes per second
Binary multiples of bits
For more details on prefixes such as kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, and tebi-, see Binary prefix.Kibibit per second
A kibibit per second (Kibit/s or Kib/s) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to 1,024 bits per second. The word "kibibit" is not capitalized, but the abbreviation "Kibits" is.
Mebibit per second
A mebibit per second (Mibit/s or Mib/s) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 1,048,576 bits per second or
- 1,024 kibibits per second.
Gibibit per second
A gibibit per second (Gibit/s or Gib/s) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 1,073,741,824 bits per second or
- 1,048,576 kibibits per second or
- 1,024 mebibits per second.
Tebibit per second
A tebibit per second (Tibit/s or Tib/s) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 1,099,511,627,776 bits per second or
- 1,073,741,824 kibibits per second or
- 1,048,576 mebibits per second or
- 1,024 gibibits per second.
Decimal multiples of bytes
WARNING: These units are often not used in the suggested ways! See section above, "Problems".
Kilobyte per second
A kilobyte per second (KB/s, KBps, kB/s, or kBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 8,000 bits per second, or
- 1,000 bytes per second, or
- 8 kilobits per second.
Megabyte per second
(not to be confused with Mbps - Mega bits per second) A megabyte per second (MB/s or MBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 8,000,000 bits per second, or
- 1,000,000 bytes per second, or
- 1,000 kilobytes per second, or
- 8 megabits per second.
Gigabyte per second
A gigabyte per second (GB/s or GBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 8,000,000,000 bits per second, or
- 1,000,000,000 bytes per second, or
- 1,000,000 kilobytes per second, or
- 1,000 megabytes per second, or
- 8 gigabits per second.
Terabyte per second
A terabyte per second (TB/s or TBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 8,000,000,000,000 bits per second, or
- 1,000,000,000,000 bytes per second, or
- 1,000,000,000 kilobytes per second, or
- 1,000,000 megabytes per second, or
- 1,000 gigabytes per second, or
- 8 terabits per second.
Binary multiples of bytes
For more details on prefixes such as kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, and tebi-, see Binary prefix.Kibibyte per second
A kibibyte per second (KiB/s or KiBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 1,024 bytes per second, or
- 8 kibibits per second, or
- 8192 bits per second.
Mebibyte per second
A mebibyte per second (MiB/s or MiBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 1,048,576 bytes per second, or
- 1,024 kibibytes per second, or
- 8 mebibits per second, or
- 8192 kibibits per second, or
- 8,388,608 bits per second.
Gibibyte per second
A gibibyte per second (GiB/s or GiBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 1,073,741,824 bytes per second, or
- 1,048,576 kibibytes per second, or
- 1,024 mebibytes per second, or
- 8 gibibits per second, or
- 8192 mebibits per second, or
- 8,388,608 kibibits per second, or
- 8,589,934,592 bits per second.
Tebibyte per second
A tebibyte per second (TiB/s or TiBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
- 1,099,511,627,776 bytes per second, or
- 1,073,741,824 kibibytes per second, or
- 1,048,576 mebibytes per second, or
- 1,024 gibibytes per second, or
- 8 tebibits per second.
- 8192 gibibits per second, or
- 8,388,608 mebibits per second, or
- 8,589,934,592 kibibits per second, or
- 8,796,093,022,208 bits per second.
Conversion formula
Name Symbol bit per second byte per second bit per second (formula) byte per second (formula) bit per second bit/s 1 0.125 1 1/8 byte per second B/s 8 1 8 1 kilobit per second kbit/s 1,000 125 103 103/8 kibibit per second Kibit/s 1,024 128 210 27 kilobyte per second kB/s 8,000 1,000 8x103 103 kibibyte per second KiB/s 8,192 1,024 213 210 megabit per second Mbit/s 1,000,000 125,000 106 106/8 mebibit per second Mibit/s 1,048,576 131,072 220 217 megabyte per second MB/s 8,000,000 1,000,000 8x106 106 mebibyte per second MiB/s 8,388,608 1,048,576 223 220 gigabit per second Gbit/s 1,000,000,000 125,000,000 109 109/8 gibibit per second Gibit/s 1,073,741,957 134,217,728 230 227 gigabyte per second GB/s 8,000,000,000 1,000,000,000 8x109 109 gibibyte per second GiB/s 8,589,934,592 1,073,741,824 233 230 terabit per second Tbit/s 1,000,000,000,000 125,000,000,000 1012 1012/8 tebibit per second Tibit/s 1,099,511,627,776 137,438,953,472 240 237 terabyte per second TB/s 8,000,000,000,000 1,000,000,000,000 8x1012 1012 tebibyte per second TiB/s 8,796,093,022,208 1,099,511,627,776 243 240 Examples
Quantity Unit bits per second bytes per second Field Description 56 kbit/s 56,000 7,000 Networking 56k modem – 56 kb/s – 56,000 b/s 64 kbit/s 64,000 8,000 Networking 64k ISDN – 64 kb/s – 64,000 b/s 1536 kbit/s 1,536,000 192,000 Networking 1536k T1 – 1,536,000 b/s (1.536 Mb/s) 1 Gbit/s 1,000,000,000 125,000,000 Networking Gigabit Ethernet 10 Gbit/s 10,000,000,000 1,250,000,000 Networking 10 Gigabit Ethernet 1 Tbit/s 1,000,000,000,000 125,000,000,000 Networking SEA-ME-WE 4 submarine communications cable – 1.28 terabits per second [1] 4 kbit/s 4,000 500 Audio data minimum achieved for encoding recognizable speech (using special-purpose speech codecs) 8 kbit/s 8,000 1,000 Audio data telephone quality 32 kbit/s 32,000 4,000 Audio data MW quality 128 kbit/s 128,000 16,000 Audio data 128 kb/s MP3 – 128,000 b/s 192 kbit/s 192,000 24,000 Audio data Nearly CD quality for a file compressed in the MP3 format 1,411.2 kbit/s 1,411,200 176,400 Audio data CD audio (uncompressed, 16 bit samples × 44.1 kHz × 2 channels) 2 Mbit/s 2,000,000 250,000 Video data VHS quality 8 Mbit/s 8,000,000 1,000,000 Video data DVD quality 27 Mbit/s 27,000,000 3,375,000 Video data HDTV quality 1.244 Gbit/s 1,244,000,000 155,500,000 Networking OC-24, a 1.244 Gb/s SONET data channel 9.953 Gbit/s 9,953,000,000 1,244,125,000 Networking OC-192, a 9.953 Gb/s SONET data channel 39.813 Gbit/s 39,813,000,000 4,976,625,000 Networking OC-768, a 39.813 Gb/s SONET data channel, the fastest in current use 60 MB/s 480,000,000 60,000,000 Computer data interfaces USB 2.0 625 MB/s 5,000,000,000 625,000,000 Computer data interfaces USB 3.0 98.3 MB/s 786,432,000 98,304,000 Computer data interfaces FireWire IEEE 1394b-2002 S800 120 MB/s 960,000,000 120,000,000 Computer data interfaces Harddrive read, Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103Uj [2] 133 MB/s 1,064,000,000 133,000,000 Computer data interfaces PATA 33 – 133 MB/s 188 MB/s 1,200,000,000 150,000,000 Computer data interfaces SATA 1.5Gb/s – First generation 375 MB/s 2,400,000,000 300,000,000 Computer data interfaces SATA 3Gb/s – Second generation 750 MB/s 4,800,000,000 600,000,000 Computer data interfaces SATA 6Gb/s – Third generation 533 MB/s 4,264,000,000 533,000,000 Computer data interfaces PCI 133 – 533 MB/s 1250 MB/s 10,000,000,000 1,250,000,000 Computer data interfaces Thunderbolt 8000 MB/s 64,000,000,000 8,000,000,000 Computer data interfaces PCI Express x16 v2.0 12000 MB/s 96,000,000,000 12,000,000,000 Computer data interfaces InfiniBand 12X QDR See also
Notes
- ^ "Fujitsu Completes Construction of SEA-ME-WE 4 Submarine Cable Network". Fujitsu Press Releases. Fujitsu. 2005-12-13. Archived from the original on 2007-03-17. http://web.archive.org/web/20070317223056/http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2005/20051213-01.html. Retrieved 2008-01-31.
- ^ "Samsung overtakes". http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-overtakes-a-bang,1730-9.html.
References
- International Electrotechnical Commission (2007). "Prefixes for binary multiples". Retrieved on 2007-05-06.
- IEC 60027-2 "Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2: Telecommunications and electronics+
- Donald Knuth: "What is a kilobyte?"
Categories:- Telecommunications terms
- Units of flow
- Units of information
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