Mbps Vs MB/s: What Do These Speeds Mean?

Know the difference between bits and bytes.

Fadfebrian/Getty Images

Its easy to lose yourself in the morass of technical terminologies when shopping for internet providers. For instance, debates over whether you should prioritize internet speed vs. bandwidth or whether you need a Wi-Fi 7 router can easily derail your search if you don't know what to look for. A prevalent and consequential mix up is between Megabits per second (Mbps) and Megabytes per second (MB/s). Although both are measurements of data transfers, confusing them can have major implications.

To understand the two, you first have to grapple with the difference between bits and bytes. Bits are the basic unit of information for computing and measure the binary 1s and 0s of that make up a string of code. Bits per second are commonly used to measure the speed of data transfers, such as internet streaming speeds or download speeds. Bytes,...

Copyright of this story solely belongs to www.engadget.com. To see the full text click HERE