Megabits or Megabytes Per Second
So is it Megabits or Megabytes?
I have been perplexed for sometime as to why www.ozspeedtest.com and OOKLA’s www.speedtest.net presented such different results.
…8Mb/s sounds 8 times better than 1MB/s…
It seems that the reason for this is that Oz Broadband Speed Test works upon a result of Decimal megaBYTES per second
where OOKLA’s Speed Test works upon a result of Decimal MEGABITS per second.
So what are Bits and Bytes?
Well in essence Bits are like an atom, the smallest unit of storage for digital data and Bytes are a groupings of 8 bits! It’s really that simple!
So why present different units measurement?
Well that answer has no definitive answer beyond what would appear to be marketing and the ease at which we the consumers can be bamboozled.
…so it’s all in the case of the b’s “b/B” but unless they are side by side you would not even tell…
You see Megabits per second is Mb/s and Megabytes per second is MB/s so it’s all in the case of the b’s “b/B” but unless they are side by side you would not even tell.
When it all boils down data is most commonly rated in MB (Megabytes) and most commonly ISP’s rate their speed in Mb (Megabits), but why, oh why, oh why, not just use one unit of measurement?
Because 8Mb/s sounds 8 times better than 1MB/s.
Most people who sign up for high-speed internet are thinking “megabyte per second” when they say “megs a second.” As Ron Stauffer in the US states on his blog in relation to this matter “I think there really is something dishonest about the way the telecom companies are treating this—they’re counting on their customers to be ignorant, in order to sell their products at what sounds like a better deal than that it really is!” and I agree. There is no good reason for ISP’s to clear this issue up because the confusion feeds their ability to baffle and bullshit the greatest majority of consumers.
Kudos to Ron Stauffer for his story on Your Internet Speed Explained: Megabits vs. Megabytes. While we both stumbled upon the real meaning of Megabits V’s Megabytes on a tech call hopefully if you have stumbled upon this you can create you own story referencing Ron and this post and make it easier for people globally to break through the Carrier BS and find the truth that lies beneath in the world of internet provision.