In theory, it would take approximately 8 seconds to transfer a file that was 100 megabytes (quite often referred to as MBs) in size. It is essential to pay close attention to the magnitude of the file that you are downloading or uploading. Most cable ISPs offer consumers 100 megabits per second (quite often referred to as Mbps) internet speeds. And because those bits sometimes come out of order and from different server locations, it’s both more accurate and more intuitive to measure speed as a factor of the number of bits per second that an internet connection is capable of transmitting, not the total number of memory units, or bytes, it transmits. In other words, the number of bytes.Īs to why we measure internet speed in bits even though the internet delivers bytes of data, it is because the internet delivers those bytes of data as single bits at a time. So when we measure the volume of information capable of being contained on, say, a hard drive, it makes sense to measure this as the total amount of memory available. This is because historically, 8 bits are needed to encode a single character of text. A byte on the other hand is a unit of memory that usually contains 8 bits.
It’s essentially a single binary data point either yes or no, on or off, up or down.
A bit is the smallest unit of computer information.
Have you ever wondered why internet speed is measured in bits per second, but the data itself is measured in bytes? Why is this? Wouldn’t it make more sense if we used the same unit of measurement for both data speed and data volume?įor those unfamiliar with the fundamentals of data measurement, this post outlines the distinct differences between bits and bytes to clear up some of the confusion surrounding this concept.
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