Broadband, Bits, Bytes to Terabytes

 

internet cabling

Internet Service Providers (ISP's) advertise their wares by quoting connection speeds and bandwith but what do they mean?  Most of us have a broadband connection via the telephone line using an ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) To the layman this means data is downloaded (viewing web pages, collecting emails) faster than data is uploaded (sending emails and attachments) from and to the internet.  ISP's usually only quote the maximum download speed for an area but this may vary considerably depending on the location of your home or business.

 

How is this measured?

Data is measured in Bits, for example one text character is 1 byte, a digital photograph is about 3MB, an A4 page of text between 1 and 2KB and two hours of video is about 1GB. the table below explains the relationship between the various units.

Data conversion table
8 bits 1 byte
1024 bytes 1 Kilobyte (Kb)
1024 kilobytes 1 Megabyte (Mb)
1024 Megabytes 1 Gigabyte (Gb)
1024 Gigabytes 1 Terabyte (Tb)

 

Bandwidth is measured in Megabits per second (Mbps) or Meg so an 8Mbps connection can download a 3Mb photo in about 4 seconds, (a Megabit being 1/8 of a MegaByte).

Various websites offer broadband connection speed checks (BBC News) and your browser will usually display the speed at which is downloading a file.

 

 

Published on: Monday, 7th November 2011

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