Let’s take a breath together.
Okay, that’s much better. One of the largest misconceptions aside from “Up To” when dealing with Internet Service is the difference between a megaBYTE and a megaBIT. They look very close to one another in their fully spelled out versions, and especially in their abbreviated format (MBps, and mbps respectively). This is another one that in my line of work I get asked about a lot.
“I’m paying for 60 megabytes per second but I’m only downloading at about 7.5 megabytes per second. Why am I paying so much and not actually getting it?!”
Well let’s stop right there. First of all, major Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and all the minor ones I’ve dealt with, sell bandwidth in megaBITs per second. This heralds back to the days of analog modems where it was actually measured in Baud. Baud is the modulation rate of a signal, and is roughly equivalent to a bit. For each modulation it can be either a 1 or a 0, which is binary. A single bit of data is either a 1 or a 0. As modem speeds increased they changed it from Baud to bits, and then as further speeds increased, kilobits, megabits and now gigabits. A byte on the other hand contains 8 bits.
With this information, we can now determine that since a bit is 1/8th of a byte, we need to multiply the download speed (which is measured in MBps, or megabytes per second) by 8. This gives us 60 megabits per second in this scenario. In real life it will be very rare to actually hit your download speeds spot on. Due to the “Up To” (which we’ll rant more about in a future The Gripes) nature of Internet Service, and the limitations on download servers, your machine, and your network hardware, there will always be fluctuation and inefficiencies. The best test of your Internet speed is to use on-line websites (like speedtest.net or speedof.me), but keep in mind that other computers, programs, and processes that are accessing the Internet will cause inaccurate readings.
Megabits and megabytes aren’t really explained by your ISP, and they’re not a very commonly known or understood term. Most people use them interchangeably. Hopefully now you understand the difference, and can help educate those around you to avoid this line of thinking in the future. Happy computing!
