If you want to be upset, look at internet speeds, they sell you mbps (megabits per second), but the standard measurement is mbps (megabytes per second), so they sell you a number 8 times bigger than the one you get.
You’ve actually got that a bit twisted. Not saying the bigger number doesn’t benifit the ISPs, but it actually is the industry standard to use bits per second when measuring throughput. This is because data transfer is a continuous stream, whereas data at rest is chunked so when talking about storage we use bytes. It’s a bit weird but you get used to it.
Right, and it’s sort of a historical quirk, as well. You always need to compare your speed to what came before. That logic stretches back to computers that did not use 8 bits per byte, but still communicated over various channels to other computers.
And then there’s just plain marketing. Not just that it makes the number 8 times higher, but that any one ISP that chose to advertise in MBps rather than Mbps would suddenly look like they’re slower. It needs to be mandated for everyone as a regulatory rule or it just won’t work at all.
That ones actually fine IMO because they advertise Mbps which is fairly clearly different from MBps (b vs B, bit vs byte), and very easy to convert between.
If you want to be upset, look at internet speeds, they sell you mbps (megabits per second), but the standard measurement is mbps (megabytes per second), so they sell you a number 8 times bigger than the one you get.
You’ve actually got that a bit twisted. Not saying the bigger number doesn’t benifit the ISPs, but it actually is the industry standard to use bits per second when measuring throughput. This is because data transfer is a continuous stream, whereas data at rest is chunked so when talking about storage we use bytes. It’s a bit weird but you get used to it.
thanks for the answer, it would be nice if we just used a single unit, and it is annoying that both are mbps.
Right, and it’s sort of a historical quirk, as well. You always need to compare your speed to what came before. That logic stretches back to computers that did not use 8 bits per byte, but still communicated over various channels to other computers.
And then there’s just plain marketing. Not just that it makes the number 8 times higher, but that any one ISP that chose to advertise in MBps rather than Mbps would suddenly look like they’re slower. It needs to be mandated for everyone as a regulatory rule or it just won’t work at all.
That ones actually fine IMO because they advertise Mbps which is fairly clearly different from MBps (b vs B, bit vs byte), and very easy to convert between.
yhea, we can assume that the vast majority of the public don’t know the difference