Last updated on September 5th, 2023 at 07:47 am
What is the difference between MB and Mb, between Megabyete per second and Megabit per second or Mbps, unit of measurement of network speed
Speaking of how to calculate the real Internet speed, you need to try to understand which unit of measurement is used.
The problem lies in the confusion that is often made between two types of units of measurement: the megabit and the megabyte, which are two different things.
For example, then, when you read an ADSL provider’s advertisement, you may see ” speeds up to 50 Mbps “, which can be misleading.
While you might think that Mbps stands for ” megabytes per second “, which means a file download speed of up to 50MB per second, the ad may be talking about Mb per second instead.
A well-known company advertises on TV saying ” up to 20 Mega “; but it never says Mega that they are, Megabit or Megabyte?
The lowercase b in Mb is very different from the abbreviation of the MegaByte, i.e. MB.
Mb stands for Megabit which is a different measure.
To understand the difference between Megabit and MegaByte it is advisable to start from the basic units of measurement, that is the bit and byte.
A byte is made up of 8 bits, so we can say that a byte is 8 times larger than a bit, or mathematically, 1 byte = 8 bits.
Consequently, a megabyte is 8 times larger than a megabit, i.e. 1 megabyte equals 8 megabits.
Conversely, one Megabit (Mb) is equal to 0.125 Megabytes (MB).
According to the conversion table between byte and bit, we have:
1 Byte = 8 Bit
1 Kbyte (KB) = 1024 Byte = 8192 Bit
1 Megabyte (MB) = 1024 Kbyte = 8192 Kbit (Kb)
1 Gigabyte (GB) = 1024 Megabyte (MB) = 8192 Mbit (Mb)
Returning to the example above, a fast 50 Megabit ADSL line is capable of downloading a maximum of 50 MB divided by 8, that is 6.25 MegaBytes per second, much slower than previously thought.
This is why it is very important to understand the difference between megabits and megabytes: to avoid scams and be disappointed that you have signed up for a contract that is eight times worse than you thought.
The distinction between Megabyte Mb and MegaByte MB is all in the letter b, which is lowercase when talking about megabits per second ( Mbps ) and uppercase when talking about Megabytes ( MBps ).
Why are there bits and bytes?
Going to discover a bit of computer history, bits and bytes are not only different in the type of measurement but also in the purpose of their existence.
In theory, bytes are used to measure storage capacities and disks or storage space (and therefore we arrive at Gigabyte GB or Terabyte TB) while bits and megabits are the units to measure the speed of an internet connection.
It is no coincidence that all tools such as Speedtest that measure the speed of the connection use the bit as a unit of measurement.
Also for this reason, as well as for obvious marketing reasons, all companies that provide ADSL internet connection advertise themselves by talking about Megabit per second, in theory, it does not do any scam and, indeed, uses the correct unit of measurement (even if in practice he does it just to advertise himself better).
However, even after this calculation, the download speed may still not reach the advertised number, due to variable elements such as the distance from the ISP, the number of people using the Internet, how well the ISP works in maintenance, etc.
