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Megabit per second
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Bit rate. (Discuss) |
| Bit rates | ||
|---|---|---|
| Decimal prefixes (SI) | ||
| Name | Symbol | Multiple |
| kilobit per second | kbit/s | 103 |
| megabit per second | Mbit/s | 106 |
| gigabit per second | Gbit/s | 109 |
| terabit per second | Tbit/s | 1012 |
| Binary prefixes (IEC 60027-2) |
||
| kibibit per second | Kibit/s | 210 |
| mebibit per second | Mibit/s | 220 |
| gibibit per second | Gibit/s | 230 |
| tebibit per second | Tibit/s | 240 |
A megabit per second (abbreviated as Mbit/s, Mbps, or mbps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to 1,000,000 bits per second. Because there are 8 bits in a byte, a transfer speed of 8 megabits per second (8 Mbps) is equivalent to 1,000,000 bytes per second (approximately 976 KiB/s).
The bandwidth of consumer broadband internet services is often rated incorrectly in Mb (a unit of information) or more correctly in Mbps; the formal abbreviation for megabit per second is Mbit/s. Note that in this context the term bandwidth is used colloquially to mean the data transfer rate.
Data streams representing compressed video are often measured in Mbit/s:
More specific examples found on standard Comcast digital streams (transmitted in MPEG2 format):
- 2-3 Mbit/s — a low-definition digital channel with a very clean signal
- 5-6 Mbit/s — a low-definition digital channel with a digitized ("dirty") analog signal (or just an analog channel)
- 8-12 Mbit/s — a medium to high-definition digital channel with DVD quality data (equivalent to HBO-HD)
- 18-20 Mbit/s — a high-definition digital channel at 1080i (equivalent to Discovery HD)
Another example, Network cards and cables are typically available in 10/100/1000 Mbit/s. This means they can support a transfer rate of 10 or 100 or 1000 Mbit/s.
| Interface | Megabits per second | Megabytes per second |
|---|---|---|
| USB 1.0, Low speed(1.0) | 1.5 Mbit/s | 0.18 MB/s |
| USB 1.1, Full speed (1.1) | 12 Mbit/s | 1.5 MB/s |
| USB 2.0, Hi speed (2.0) | 480 Mbit/s | 60 MB/s |
| USB 3.0, Super speed (3.0) | 4.8 Gbit/s | 600MB/s |
| Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394) | 400 Mbit/s | 50 MB/s |
| Firewire 800 (IEEE 1394b) | 800 Mbit/s | 100 MB/s |
| CD-ROM, 1x | 1.2 Mbit/s | 0.15 MB/s |
| CD-ROM, 52x | 62.4 Mbit/s | 7.8 MB/s |
| DVD-ROM, 1x | 11.1 Mbit/s | 1.3 MB/s |
| DVD-ROM, 16x | 177.3 Mbit/s | 21.1 MB/s |
| BD-ROM, 1x | 54.0 Mbit/s | 6.75 MB/s |
| SATA I | 1200 Mbit/s | 150 MB/s |
| SATA II | 2400 Mbit/s | 300 MB/s |
- Megabit, a unit of information storage (as opposed to transmission)
- List of device bandwidths
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Megabyte per second (MB/s or MBps)
- Gigabit per second (Gbit/s or Gbps)
- Gigabyte per second (GB/s or GBps)