Have you heard of the new band in town named “999 Megabytes”?
They are good but they do not have a gig yet!
If you did not understand this joke, you need to get up to speed with bytes. At the very least, it will help you understand internet speeds and what you have been paying your internet provider for.
First, let us address the joke starting with the concept that 1000 megabytes make up 1 gigabyte. Therefore, the joke is that 999 megabytes does not quite equal a gigabyte, or a gig for short.
Next, let’s look into how this translates to your internet speed. There are some prerequisites you need to understand first.
- Bit – Internet speed is measured in bits per second (bps). This is the smallest unit of computer information, so you’ll often see internet speeds referred to as megabits per second (Mbps).
- Byte – 1 byte is equal to 8 bits. We use bytes to refer to how much memory is available or being transferred.
- Download – This tells you how quickly information from external sources is received by your router.
- Upload – This tells you how quickly information from your network is sent to external networks.
- Mbps – “Megabits per second” is how we gauge internet speeds. This number represents the bandwidth of an internet connection, which is how much data can be transferred each second.
- MBps – “Megabytes per second” measures the file size when talking about how much data can be transferred each second. You might also see this figure represented as MB.
Putting it all together now, download and upload speeds are measured in Mbps. Internet download speeds of 100 Mbps or more are considered fast. You can do a speed test for yourself by typing in speed test on Google.