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1. ds1 - Member

   I wonder if anyone who has bought BT broadband could tell me if their website speeds - advertised as "up to xx Mb download speed" - are megabytes or megabits?Been stung with one supplier thinking it was the former and turned out to be the latter.

   I've just used BT "technical help chat" and come out non the wiser really:

   me: Hi we're looking at BT Infinity - could you tell us if the "Mb" download speeds on your website are Megabytes or Megabits?
   Meheli: it is mega bytes or mbps
   Meheli: Is there anything else I can help you with today?
   me: Sorry, mbps is megabits, MBps is megabytes that is what I'm trying to be clear about
   Meheli: bit: singular
   Meheli: bytes: plural
   Meheli: they are same
   me: Sorry, the singular of 'bits' is 'bit'! There are different units and there are eight bits to every byte. So it is an important difference
   Meheli: you know the answer..
   Meheli: we use as Mbps
   Meheli: and spell it as megabytes
   me: I am asking if your website is bits or bytes as they are two different speeds and it is not clear what is being stated
   Meheli: it is bytes
   me: Ok thanks for that
   Meheli: I am sorry it is megabits
   Meheli: confirmed with the supervisor.
   Meheli: sorry for that
   me: Ok thanks

   So the voice of experience would be of great help! A

   Posted 5 months ago #
2. GrahamS - Member

   I would imagine megabits. Network speeds are (should) always specified in terms of bits per second.

   Posted 5 months ago #
3. TheBrick - Member

   I always though that although 1 byte = 8 bits normally, there is no rigid definition that 1 byte HAS to be 8 bits.

   Posted 5 months ago #
4. Bez - Member

   That transcript is 100% OF CLASS.

   And what Graham said.

   Posted 5 months ago #
5. CharlieMungus - Member

   Either way, that conversation is hilarious!

   Posted 5 months ago #
6. GrahamS - Member

   TheBrick: yep. that's why network speeds are given in bits I think, because it is system-agnostic.

   Posted 5 months ago #
7. TheBrick - Member

   Makes sense.Found a reference! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

   The size of the byte has historically been hardware dependent and no definitive standards exist that mandate the size.

   Yep funny transcript.

   Posted 5 months ago #
8. druidh - Member

   It's bits. It's always been bits. Everyone uses bits. What a stupid bloody question!

   Posted 5 months ago #
9. Bez - Member

   "What a stupid bloody question! "

   The question's not that stupid - if you were a techie you'd expect some stick for asking it but not a layman - but the answer, now that's a stupid bloody answer

   Posted 5 months ago #
10. druidh - Member

    Of course it's a stupid question. It's like seeing carpet advertised in Sq M and asking if that's metres or miles!

    Name me one - any - network provider that has ever advertised their speed in Megabytes per second.

    Anyway - convention is that megabyte is abbreviated as MB and megabit as Mb.

    Posted 5 months ago #
11. GrahamS - Member

    You're quite right tho, "Mb" is completely the wrong prefix.

    It should be specified as Mbit/s (or Mb/s or Mbps), but you can't expect BT to know about telecoms...

    Posted 5 months ago #
12. Cougar - Member

    Tremendous.

    It's cocknockers like him that give support a bad name. No wonder every halfwit thinks they can do it, when we're employing people who have to check with their supervisor to tell the difference between bits and bytes.

    Druid is correct, of course. Every ISP will advertise speeds in Mbps, it's been that way since we used to refer just to bps and baud rates.

    Posted 5 months ago #
13. john_walker74 - Member

    ... or expect somebody to know the difference between a prefix, suffix and a unit!

    Posted 5 months ago #
14. Bez - Member

    "Of course it's a stupid question. It's like seeing carpet advertised in Sq M and asking if that's metres or miles!"

    Yeah, except that pretty much everyone deals with those units every day, making it quite obvious that carpets don't come by the mile - whereas the majority of consumers don't actually know what a bit or a byte are, let alone how people measure the quantity of knock-off music, kitten videos and naked ladies that they suck in through the wire in the wall.

    Bits and bytes and the reasons why network speeds are in bits might be obvious to you or me, but it's gobbledegook to most people.

    Posted 5 months ago #
15. GrahamS - Member

    Yep Bez, and we can't expect them to learn when major companies insist on using the wrong suffix*.

    .
    * Yeah yeah, prefix/suffix. It's late, I've had wine and I'm working while answering this nonsense.

    Posted 5 months ago #
16. Cougar - Member

    the majority of consumers don't actually know what a bit or a byte are

    Thing is, they don't need to. They just need to know that everyone's using the same unit so that they can compare like with like(*), it could be gibbons per Venusian fortnight for the difference it makes.

    (* - or at least, claimed up-to-like with claimed up-to-like)

    Posted 5 months ago #
17. highclimber - Member

    most definately BITs not bytes! BB speeds are therefore 8 times slower than people expect!

    That transcript is brilliant. Technician doesn't know what he's talking about, shocker!

    Posted 5 months ago #
18. samuri - Member

    But really. It's bits. Bytes would be a capital B.

    Posted 5 months ago #
19. benjbish - Member

    Amazing!

    Posted 5 months ago #
20. choron - Member

    Generally, digital communication rates are measured in bits per second (b/s or bps) while stored digital information is measured in bytes (B). The 8-bit byte is a bit of a historical overhang: a byte is related to the size of a computer instruction (32 or 64 in most modern systems).

    There is also an interesting overlap where information content of things (signals, images, books, clouds...) is measured in bits.

    Cougar: who is using baud and for what? might not be old enough to remember, but that seems rather technical for most people (at least to me). For instance: 10GbE => 10.7GBd but 100GbE =>28GBd

    Posted 5 months ago #
21. 5lab - Member

    Thing is, are the megabits 1024x1024 bits. Or 1000x1000 bits (as a lot of drive companies measure megabytes)..

    Useless fact : a nibble is half a byte, or 4 bits

    Posted 5 months ago #
22. GrahamS - Member

    According to SI they should be decimal, so 1 Mbit/s is 1,000,000 bits per second.

    Posted 5 months ago #
23. bencooper - Member

    Bytes do still make some sense, as each ASCII character is one byte.

    Posted 5 months ago #
24. Bez - Member

    "each ASCII character is one byte"

    If we're being picky, no, it's 7 bits.

    Posted 5 months ago #
25. bencooper - Member

    True, I'm thinking of the extended ASCII

    Posted 5 months ago #
26. mboy - Member

    What Bez said +1111101000

    I leave you with one guess who learnt to count in Binary the other week, but as Bez says, how would the normal customer have a clue as I doubt a lot of techies even know the difference between bits and bytes.

    Posted 5 months ago #
27. shaxi - Blocked

    not very sure of that ,but i'd like to google it and learn more !
    thanks !

    

    Posted 5 months ago #
28. Cougar - Member

    The 8-bit byte is a bit of a historical overhang: a byte is related to the size of a computer instruction (32 or 64 in most modern systems).

    A 'byte' is 8 bits. What you're describing there is a 'word.'

    Posted 5 months ago #
29. IanMunro - Member

    "Of course it's a stupid question. It's like seeing carpet advertised in Sq M and asking if that's metres or miles!

    If someone says something is 25.4mil wide, how wide is that in inches?

    Posted 5 months ago #
30. IHN - Member

    Useless fact : a nibble is half a byte, or 4 bits
    

    I was going to say that, grr. And isn't it nybble?

    Threads like this are why we IT geeks get all the girls

    Posted 5 months ago #
31. GrahamS - Member

    A 'byte' is 8 bits. What you're describing there is a 'word.'

    Not according to wiki. I was taught (way back in the day) that the size of a byte is arbitrary, but almost always 8 bits.

    For the really geeky:

    Kernighan & Ritchie defined a char in C as "character - a single byte".

    The C standard (C90, §5.2.4.2.1) only requires that CHAR_BIT (which defines the number of bits in a char) is at least 8 bits.

    See also the C++ FAQ.

    Posted 5 months ago #
32. IanMunro - Member

    I think y'all find 8 bits is a dollar.

    Posted 5 months ago #
33. 5lab - Member

    I was going to say that, grr. And isn't it nybble?

    can be nibble, nybble or nyble

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibble

    Posted 5 months ago #
34. llama - Member

    ha that's nothing the person in charge or IT on our site was going on about upgrading us to 56 bit Windows the other day

    Posted 5 months ago #
35. Cougar - Member

    isn't it nybble?

    Only if you're a git. (-: Alternative spelling.

    Not according to wiki. I was taught (way back in the day) that the size of a byte is arbitrary, but almost always 8 bits

    You're (/ Wikipedia is) right, but not really for any practical means. It might've been arbitrary in the 50s but it hasn't meant anything else for a long time.

    ha that's nothing the person in charge or IT on our site was going on about upgrading us to 56 bit Windows the other day

    Did you have them escorted from the premises? I think I would.

    Posted 5 months ago #

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