Knowing The Difference Between MB/sec (KB/sec) and Mb/sec (Kb/sec) Data Speed Unit Can Make A Difference

Just like in real life, most times it is that tiny things that you neglect that usually make the difference.

Also similar in examination halls or job interview, you will always find out that the examiner or the interviewer mostly come up with tiny and tricky questions that if care is not taken, will likely confuse those taking the exams or being interviewed.

Now, going to the topic of discussion, we noticed that many internet data users don’t usually take note of little thing like differentiating the known units of data consumption speed when given Byte per second or bit per second.

You will agree with us that Byte and bit are two different units of data storage in a disk; and while it’s a common knowledge that 1Byte is equivalent to 8bit, people often fail to take cognisance of the difference between these two similar units when abbreviated, to know which exactly is being put to use, especially when they are given as part of data speed measures/units in MB/sec (KB/sec) or Mb/s (Kb/sec).

Sometimes these data speed units are simply abbreviated straight like in MBps (KBps) or Mbps (Kbps) without functioning them as given above. 

But the most important thing to note here and the point we are trying to point out is the capitalization of the “B” part in the given units and also when used with small letter ‘b’.

Many folks out there ordinarily don’t usually use to take note of that, and they end up mixing up things together or complicating things, and hence one might find it difficult to engage in meaningful or knowledge driven arguments with them.

Most times, they are usually of the opinion that whether written as Mb/sec or MB/sec that it is always Mega-Byte per second, having forgotten that it can as well mean Mega bit per second depending on how the units were abbreviated.

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Therefore we are using this opportunity to clear up the air and for knowledge sake, it is important to take notes of some of these little things that can actually make a difference when it will matter most. 

And we are going to be putting it straight or correcting the wrong notion that anywhere data speed units are written in Mb/sec or MB/sec that they both stand for Mega Byte per seconds.

As you can see clearly, one has capital B in it, denoting Byte whereas the other has the small letter b denoting bit.

And we earlier said that 1 Byte is equivalent to 8 Bit, hence you should from hence forth take note that when you see data speed unit given as MB/sec, it is refers to Mega Byte per seconds which is higher than Mb/sec, which denotes Mega-bit per seconds.

A typical example can be seen on the image above, you will notice that data download speed there given in Kilo bit per second (Kbps) contrary to what many of you might refer to as Kilo Byte per second (KBps).