Why is 90 Mbps, not 90 Mbps?

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Stroyed

Member
So I was downloading a 17 gig game on Steam and it said it was downloading at 90 Mbps. But that wasn't really true because if it were, the entire download would be done in about 3 minutes. So out of curiosity, how come the speed your told is faster than the speed it really is?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
So how long did it take? How fast is your internet speed package? Well if your terminology is right then 90 megabits per second is a transfer rate of only 11.25 Megabytes per second.
 

Stroyed

Member
So how long did it take? How fast is your internet speed package? Well if your terminology is right then 90 megabits per second is a transfer rate of only 11.25 Megabytes per second.
Oh. I didn't realize that Mbps meant megabits per second. I thought it meant megabytes per second. Oh well.
 

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
Mbps= Mega Bits Per Second

MBps= Mega Bytes Per Second.

I like Mnps= Mega Nibbles Per Second. LOL!

I think ISP's love to use the asinine bit per second so that the speed looks higher than it really is. I could only imagine. They advertise a 25/6 Mbps connection when that's really a 3/.750 connection. Doesn't look good does it?
 

Cromewell

Administrator
Staff member
Everything in the networking world is in bits per second.

And it's not that different than harddrive manufactures selling you a 5TB drive that's 5000000000000 bytes not 5497558138880 bytes as that's what every OS out there thinks 5TB is.
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Interesting on Steam as it usually gives you MB/s as units by default, unless you were looking at some router utilization or similar, however 90 MB/sec would require a gigabit Internet connection.

What kind of speed package do you have from your ISP?
 

Geoff

VIP Member
Everything in the networking world is in bits per second.

And it's not that different than harddrive manufactures selling you a 5TB drive that's 5000000000000 bytes not 5497558138880 bytes as that's what every OS out there thinks 5TB is.
And interfaces such as SATA, PCI-E, Thunderbolt, USB, etc. are all measured in Megabits per second.
 

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
Whether the tech world use bits per second or not, I think it's safe to say it has a dual purpose as well in the ISP marketing scheme. It just sounds better to say your connection will be a blazing 30 Mbps instead of 3.75 MBps.
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
I think it's safe to say it has a dual purpose as well in the ISP marketing scheme.
Eh, debatable. A transmission medium like a PCIE bus or network wire doesn't really give two craps about 8 bits being allocated in a byte, it simply transits data on a 0 or 1 basis.
 

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
Really? You honestly think that if a ISP advertises 3.75 MBps vs 30 Mbps isn't a good marketing ploy? Do you work for Comcast or something?
 

Intel_man

VIP Member
Really? You honestly think that if a ISP advertises 3.75 MBps vs 30 Mbps isn't a good marketing ploy? Do you work for Comcast or something?
The use of a "bit" to measure network speeds has been around way before the establishment of the "Internet" you know of. It was at that time, very difficult to measure everything in bytes because back then, 1 byte wasn't necessarily 8 bits. 8 bit became popular when Intel released the 8080. More and more competitors adopted the 8-bit microprocessing and that's probably what made 8-bit = 1 byte, since that basically means that 8 bits = 1 chunk of data (byte).

So, stop trying to tin-foil hat this. The measurement using bit stuck around even after the byte got standardized. ISP's took advantage of this, but it's not like we were measuring in bytes in the first place and then they realized using bits would yield a bigger number to market.
 

Geoff

VIP Member
Really? You honestly think that if a ISP advertises 3.75 MBps vs 30 Mbps isn't a good marketing ploy? Do you work for Comcast or something?
It has nothing to do with advertising, it's because almost all transmission speeds are measured in bits, not bytes. A SATA hard drive is listed as 6Gbps. A network card is measures as 100Mbps, 1Gbps, etc. A PCI-E bus interface is measured in Gbps. There is nothing deceiving about it, they are pushing x number of megabits per second down their pipe.
 

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
Jesus christ. Look what I said FFS!

Whether the tech world use bits per second or not, I think it's safe to say it has a dual purpose as well in the ISP marketing scheme. It just sounds better to say your connection will be a blazing 30 Mbps instead of 3.75 MBps.


I know it's a legit way of saying things, but I know damn well ISPs love to use bits instead of bytes.
 

aldan

Active Member
you gotta point.people like big numbers and 30Mbs does sound better than 3.75MBs.it doesnt matter what the industry standard is,it is,although not entirely,a matter of marketing.
 

Intel_man

VIP Member
Jesus christ. Look what I said FFS!
We did.

vvvv That's what you said first and it comes off being a complete conspiracy nut job statement.
I think ISP's love to use the asinine bit per second so that the speed looks higher than it really is. I could only imagine. They advertise a 25/6 Mbps connection when that's really a 3/.750 connection. Doesn't look good does it?

Then you went on saying the following misleading statements suggesting that ISP uses the bit measurement purely for marketing purposes.
It just sounds better to say your connection will be a blazing 30 Mbps instead of 3.75 MBps.

I don't think the consumer gives two shits about tech metrics. Marketing is big business.

Really? You honestly think that if a ISP advertises 3.75 MBps vs 30 Mbps isn't a good marketing ploy? Do you work for Comcast or something?

=========================

I know it's a legit way of saying things
So... why are you suggesting otherwise?
but I know damn well ISPs love to use bits instead of bytes.
Because that's what everyone in that profession uses to measure network transfer speeds. ISP isn't misleading anyone. It's only confusing people who don't understand what a bit is vs what a byte is and the history behind it. You let them know the reason to all this and I'm pretty certain that they'll understand why and agree to the terminology used.
 
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