Internet Speed myth

I am writing about another myth after a long time. I get the urge of killing a myth when I really get inspired to so in my offline world. This myth buster is inspired by another one which will follow up.

This post is for the people who tends to get in the catch of Internet providers who offers them insane speed but they don’t get the offered speed, not because the providers are cheating on the users but because of the fact that they exploit a technical aspect here.

It happened with my friend in way back 2006, when he get himself an internet connection of 256 Kbps and calculated that he would be able to download a 1 MB file in just 4 seconds as 1 MB = 1024 KB & 1024 KB / 256 Kbps = 4 seconds but we all know that it certainly takes more time.

However, this is incorrect. There is a difference between Kbps and KBps.

1Kbps is 1 Kilobits per sec whereas 1KBps is 1 Kilobytes per sec

1 Byte = 8 Bits

So 1 KBps is 8 times faster than 1 Kbps

And by convention we use bps to represent network transfer speed so Internet providers use this to market their internet speed. When they say they 256 Kbps, they mean Kbps and not KBps. I have seen providers marketing their speed as KBps too but that’s just a fault of their part or a marketing gimmick.

So doing our maths again,

256 Kbps = 32 KBps (256/8=32)

1MB = 1024 KB

1024 KB / 32 KBps = 32 seconds

I hope I made the point clear. Have you seen people miscalculating this too? Leave your response in the comments.