Don’t want to be deceived by ISP: the difference between MBPS and Mbps that are often hidden!

Have you ever felt cheated by an internet service provider? You subscribe to the package at a speed of 100 Mbps, but when you try to download the file, the number is actually much smaller, only about 12.5 Mbps. Don’t rush to make a complaint, because it turns out that this is not a marketing trick to outwit customers.

difference between Internet speed Mbps and Mbps are one of the most common confusions in the world of technology. Although it looks similar at first glance, the two have completely different units.

Understanding Bit vs Byte

The main key to understanding this difference lies in the lowercase “B” and “B” capital. In the world of computing, digital data is measured in bits and bytes.

Mbps stands for megabit per second (megabits per second). While MBPS stands for Megabyte per second (megabyte per second). Keep in mind, one byte is equivalent to eight bits (1 byte = 8 bits).

This is the reason why the numbers you see in internet speed test results or the specifications of the ISP (Internet Service Provider) always look much bigger than the speed when downloading real files. When the ISP promises a speed of 100 Mbps, they use units of bits. Meanwhile, the computer operating system or downloader application often uses units of bytes to show how fast your files are moving.

Why is this unit different?

The telecommunications industry uses MBPS as a global standard to measure network bandwidth. The bit unit was chosen because it is the smallest data unit that can be sent via wired or wireless transmission.

On the other hand, storage devices such as hard disks or SSDs use units of bytes because bytes are the basic units used by computers to store characters or data in files.

As an example of a simple conversion:

• If you have a connection speed of 80 Mbps.
• Then your maximum download speed in bytes is 80 divided by 8.
• The result is 10 Mbps.

So, when you see the difference in numbers, don’t immediately think your connection is problematic. Remember that 1 Mbps is equal to 8 Mbps. By understanding this basic difference, you can be wiser in monitoring the performance of the network you pay every month.