Can someone explain download speeds to me?

[Implode]

Given the speed of 16Mbps, are those Megabytes per second? In advertisements, they pronounce the word as if it were Megabits. I understand that 8 bits = 1 byte. When they say 16 Megabits per second, are they being stupid, and they actually mean 16 Megabytes, or do they literally mean 16 Megabits (which would be 2 Megabytes)?

[Sigz]

It's in megabits.

[AcidLameLTE]

It's in megabits.

[Implode]

Okay. Is there any reason why they chose to use bits over bytes?

[rumborak]

Yeah, it's Meagbits. The reason they're doing it is because the byte might not be the most useful unit of data transmission. When data goes through the cable it gets compressed beforehand (to save bandwidth), which however transforms the bytes you're tying to transmit into a bitstream.
Because of that you also can't necessarily make the computation Megabits/8 = Megabytes, since the amount of bytes you're receiving on your end are a function of the compression over the cable.

rumborak

[Nekov]

Also because internet companies are assholes and know that most of the people probably don't know the difference and customers will assume they are getting a faster internet than they actually are.

[kirksnosehair]

Bit: short form for binary digit. It is either a 0 or a 1 (binary code).

1 byte= 8 bits.

1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes.

1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes.

1 megabyte=1024*1024=1,048,576 bytes and 1 byte=8 bits, and 1 megabyte (1048576) is just 8,388,608 bits, then 1 megabit is approximately .125 megabytes.

Generally - Bits are used to talk about data transfer rates (1 kilobit = 1000 bits), while bytes are used to talk about storage size calculations (1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes). So when your Internet provider offers you a 1Mb connection, its megaBits not MegaBytes. So for a rough guide of how MUCH you can download, divide by eight. i.e. 1Mb speed = 128KB of data.

[Implode]

Thanks everyone.

[lonestar]

Bit: short form for binary digit. It is either a 0 or a 1 (binary code).

1 byte= 8 bits.

1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes.

1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes.

1 megabyte=1024*1024=1,048,576 bytes and 1 byte=8 bits, and 1 megabyte (1048576) is just 8,388,608 bits, then 1 megabit is approximately .125 megabytes.

Generally - Bits are used to talk about data transfer rates (1 kilobit = 1000 bits), while bytes are used to talk about storage size calculations (1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes). So when your Internet provider offers you a 1Mb connection, its megaBits not MegaBytes. So for a rough guide of how MUCH you can download, divide by eight. i.e. 1Mb speed = 128KB of data.

Wow, that made sense.  Thanks bud.

[Implode]

Yes. I wish they were more consistant. According to Wikipedia, there are two different systems of powers used in data. 1 KB could mean 10^3 (1000) bytes in SI, but in binary (which makes more sense in this situation in my opinion) it would be 2^10 (1024) bytes.

In my high school computer class we had to learn it in the SI way. Bluh.

[Fiery Winds]

Yeah, and of course for marketing purposes they say that 1GB = 1 billion bytes, as opposed to the way computers actually count it.  One reason why your 500GB hard drive really only has ~475 GB of space.