Knowing how your home internet works may rely on understanding these two key terms: Megabits and Megabytes. Internet terminology is often maddeningly confusing. Case in point: Megabits and megabytes. Both refer to units of digital information, but the difference is subtle enough to cause plenty of confusion. Knowing the difference between the two terminologies can make all the difference when picking out an internet plan or figuring out how quickly you can download a file. Don’t worry -- we’ll clear it all up so you never get scolded on Reddit again.
Megabits vs. Megabytes
It all starts with bits and bytes. A bit is a single binary data point and the most basic unit of information in computing; it's typically either a one or a zero. A byte is a collection of eight bits. Why eight? It takes eight bits to produce one unit of text, like a “J” or “#”. Bytes are used primarily to measure size or storage, like files of movies, images or documents. Bits are also measures of size, but they’re used in relation to speed. You’ll almost never hear someone talk about “bits” unless there’s a “per second” right after it.
Now let’s add the “mega” part to the equation. Because bits and bytes are so small -- just a single letter or number -- they’re not really useful when we’re talking about bigger files like images or videos. “Mega” simply means “1 million.” One megabit is 1 million bits; one megabyte is equal to 1 million bytes or 8 megabits.
Locating local internet providers
Internet service providers typically advertise speeds in megabits per second or the speed it takes to download or upload information to and from the internet.
Consider the abbreviation
A lot of the confusion around megabits and megabytes happens when they’re abbreviated. A megabit is written as Mb, while a megabyte is MB. Internet speeds are always referred to as Mbps or megabits per second. Megabytes per second is almost always used to refer to how quickly a storage device can transfer data, like when a hard disk reads data or a file is uploaded to the cloud using an Ethernet connection. Megabytes per second is written as MBps or MB/s.
Locating local internet providers
How to convert between megabytes and megabits
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