Bits and Bandwidths - Gigabyte, Megabyte, or GB and MB?

The bit is the smallest unit of measurement on a computer. There is almost always eight bits in one byte. Very often these two terms are confused with each other. To make it even more confusing, the abbreviation for bit is a lowercase b, while byte is abbreviated with an uppercase B.

Most of the time, a kilobyte refers to 1024 bytes. A megabyte is 1024 kilobytes, and a gigabyte is 1024 megabytes. The next level would be terabytes, or 1024 gigabytes, but hard drives really haven't gotten past that at this point in time.

However, when you are talking about the speed of an internet connection, it is almost always going to be referred to in bits, whether it is kilobits (Kb), megabits (Mb), or gigabits (Gb). So, if the speed of a connection is referred to in megabits, for example, it would be megabits per second, or Mbps. That means a 100 Mbps connection can transfer 100 megabits every second, which equals about 12.5 megabytes per second.

  • 0 Users Found This Useful
Was this answer helpful?

Related Articles

cPanel Web Hosting Features

The Most Popular Features The quantity of tools offered by cPanel web hosting represents a near...

How to Change your PHP Version

Your Control Panel account displays its PHP version on its home page. Log in to your Hosting...

How do I redirect www to non-www or vice versa (http and https)?

To do the WWW to non-WWW or vise versa redirection, simply create a .htaccess file in the...

Glossary of common terms used in web hosting

ActiveX A loosely defined set of technologies developed by Microsoft. ActiveX is an outgrowth of...

Setup Gmail or Facebook Account Logins for Connect

How to setup a Gmail or Social Media Account Login for CONNECT Panel?To make use of the 3rd party...