<\/p>\n
Megabytes vs. Megabits<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019ll often see advertisements for internet or smartphone providers, promoting the fast internet speeds you\u2019ll get if you switch to their services. Providers are cautious not to say megabytes or megabits. They\u2019ll say something like “You\u2019ll get (up to) 300 Megs per second.”<\/span><\/p>\n Megs is a nice name, but…<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Now, most people automatically assume that when they see 300 Megs per second as the advertised download speed, they will be downloading at a speed of around 300 megabytes per second. Then the wheels start spinning\u2026 people start thinking\u2026\u201dHmm, I can download a 2 GB file in less than 10 seconds\u2026wow, that\u2019s great. Sign me up!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But wait. There\u2019s something amiss here. You\u2019ll seldom hear or read about an Internet provider offering fast internet speeds in megabytes per second and you\u2019ll learn why all providers now seem to use the term \u201cmegs per second”.<\/span><\/p>\n Most of you know what a megabyte is, but many folks don’t know what a megabit is. Internet and cellphone providers know this and use the word \u201cmegs\u201d knowing (I think) that most people will assume megs means megabytes.<\/span><\/p>\n Now let’s see why providers use megs instead of telling you the real speed they offer. There’s a huge difference between megabytes and megabits. And to explain this to you, we’ll defer to the experts at highspeedinternet.com<\/a> \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n Megabits vs. megabytes: Why it matters<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n These subtle differences in units make it easy to flub your math when dealing with your internet speed. If you happen to get them mixed up, your calculations will be off. Way off.<\/span><\/p>\n For example, let\u2019s say you want to download a 500 MB file, and you have a 100 Mbps internet connection. If you don\u2019t notice the capital B in the file size, you might estimate that this download would take five seconds. However, the units don\u2019t match up. The file size is measured in megabytes, while the connection speed is measured in megabits per second. Since the file size is eight times larger than you originally estimated, it actually takes eight times as long to download\u201440 seconds.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, waiting 35 seconds longer than you expected isn\u2019t too bad, but waiting an extra 35 minutes on a download that was supposed to take only five is more of an inconvenience. This can also be frustrating if you realize you\u2019re paying for an internet connection that gives you a lot less speed than you thought\u2026<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So there you go. If your Internet provider offers you 100 megs per second don\u2019t be fooled into thinking they\u2019re offering you 100 megabytes per second, because what they\u2019re really offering you is 12.5 megabytes per second.<\/span><\/p>\n And remember too that MB<\/strong>ps means Megabytes per second and Mb<\/strong>ps means megabits per second. When providers say 300 megs per second download speeds, they hope you\u2019ll think megabytes per second. But when they use the term \u201cmegs\u201d they\u2019re almost always talking about megabits per second. So that blindingly fast 300 megs, is 37.5 megabytes per second – still fast\u2026but not nearly as fast as you might have thought.<\/span><\/p>\n Now you’re megs-smart and the term “megs” won\u2019t fool you because now you know what Megs really means.<\/span><\/p>\n If you have a girlfriend, wife, child, or grandchild named Megs, we can’t help you there.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Megabytes vs. Megabits You\u2019ll often see advertisements for internet or smartphone providers, promoting the fast internet speeds you\u2019ll get if you switch to their services. Providers are cautious not to say megabytes or megabits. They\u2019ll say something like “You\u2019ll get (up to) 300 Megs per second.” Megs is a nice name, but… Now, most people automatically assume\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4179,1433,4517,4518],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29121,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29119\/revisions\/29121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}