Speed Bumps

What the numbers mean

First, a bit. A bit is the smallest unit of digital information, either a one or a zero. So bits per second (bps) is a measure of how many ones or zeroes can move down a connection in a second.

A megabit is a million bits. So a connection that manages 5 Mbps can handle five million bits per second.

Next, a byte. A byte is a collection of eight bits, which is just enough information to hold a single letter or number. The documents you use on your computer are usually thousands or millions of bytes in size, so you tend to see them measured in kilobytes or megabytes.

A kilobyte (kB) is 1,024 bytes, and a megabyte (MB) is 1,048,576 bytes. To use some more meaningful references, a word processor document might be 200kB in size, and the standard pictures your digital camera takes are probably somewhere around 1MB each. Downloadable songs are usually between 3 and 4 MB each. A CD holds roughly 700MB.

So: a connection that manages 5Mbps can transmit about 625 kB per second, which means about six seconds to download a song.

November 21, 2007
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