Can’t tell your bits from your bytes? Read on to learn the difference and figure out what broadband speed is right for your home.
Connection speeds and data sizes are measured differently, but people tend to informally refer to them both as ‘megs’. The problem is that the word ‘meg’ actually refers to two very different values: megabits and megabytes. Are they really the same thing?
Actually no, there’s a big difference between a bit and a byte. A byte is much bigger — eight times bigger, to be exact, with eight bits in every byte. So there are eight megabits (Mb) in every megabyte (MB), and eight gigabits (Gb) in every gigabyte (GB).
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Bits, bytes and broadband speeds
You may be wondering how this relates to you and your broadband speed.
Data sizes are usually measured in ‘bytes’, and broadband speeds are measured in ‘bits’. Based on the file size and your connection speed, you can estimate how long it’ll take you to download something.
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Let’s say you find a file online that is 17 megabytes (MB) in size, and you want to download it using your 17 megabit per second (Mbps) broadband connection. This will not take one second. It will take eight second, because a megabyte has eight times the size of a megabit. So in theory — and with a perfectly consistent speed — it should take eight seconds to download.
Before you reach for your calculator, take a look at our guide to downloading times. We’ve pulled together a list of the most common broadband speeds and file sizes to give you an idea of how long it will take to download films, TV series, songs and more.
How can I tell the difference between a bit and a byte?
You can see how it is written. A byte is an uppercase ‘B’ and a bit is a lowercase ‘b’. A megabyte is one that says MB (all capitals). It is a megabit if it says Mb.
There is one exception to this, of course, and it is the symbol for kilobit, which is ‘kb’, all lowercase. These file sizes are small enough that you won’t be able to see many of them.
It’s easy to figure out based on common sense: an uppercase ‘B’ is physically larger than a lowercase ‘b’, and a byte is larger than a bit.
Other file sizes to know about
While there’s a range of different file sizes, most of us only need to know a little bit (no pun intended) of prefixes. These are the most popular.
- KB, MB, GB – A kilobyte (KB) is 1,024 bytes. One megabyte (MB), is 1,024 Kilobytes. One gigabyte (GB), is 1,024 megabytes. A terabyte, or TB, is 1,024 gigabytes.
- kb, Mb, Gb – A kilobit (kb) is 1,024 bits. One megabit (Mb), is 1,024 Kilobits. A gigabit is 1,024 megabits. A terabit, or Tb, is 1,024 gigabits.
Keep that in mind! Eight bits make up a byte. To translate one byte to another, multiply or divide by 8. It will take you eight seconds to transfer 38MB over a 38Mbps connection.
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