Studying the basics of computer literacy at a school lesson in computer science or with the help of a self-instruction manual necessarily includes a section on units of measurement of volumes of information. Each user is familiar with the simplest of them, but applying knowledge in practice is by no means always possible.
♥ BY TOPIC: How to download files, documents, videos and music to iPhone and iPad from the Internet.
One of the common problems of the modern inexperienced owner of a gadget with access to the Web is determining the speed of the Internet, because a rare provider provides a channel that meets the characteristics specified in the contract. And taking into account the objective reasons and problems on the subscriber’s side (outdated router, malware, cable damage, etc.), the speed is usually several times lower than the declared one. However, there is another reason – confusion in megabytes and megabytes.
- Mbit = Megabits = Mbps
- MB = Mbyte = MB = MB = Megabyte
♥ BY TOPIC: How to disable cellular Internet for certain applications on iPhone and iPad.
The technical support operator of any provider can easily name the program that is the reason for most calls from subscribers complaining about the low speed of the Internet – this is uTorrent. The fact is that everyone’s favorite software for downloading pirated content shows download speed in megabyteswhile the generally accepted internet speed is megabits (Mbps), which, as you might guess, contains 8 times less information (1 MB = 8 Mb). That is, even if the provider and the subscriber’s own equipment provide an Internet connection with the speed of receiving incoming packets (download speed) 100 Mbps, then downloading a movie in Full HD quality with a “weight” of 9,000 MB will not take at all 9,000 / 100 = 90 seconds, and 9000 / (100/8) = 12 minutes.
In other words, on a network with a bandwidth of 100 Mbit (Megabits) per second, the file download speed will be 100/8 = 12.5 MB (Megabytes) per second, and not 100 MB (Megabytes) per second.
Why is such confusion needed? There is no exact answer to this question, however, marketing is the most likely reason. Indeed, even an experienced user, reading an advertising brochure from a new provider in his city, can hardly divide the speed indicated there in megabits by eight.
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