What Is Bits Per Second (bps)?
When you think of a data transmission system, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Is it something that is there on your computer? Is there something useful that we can do with it? Is it the internet? Or maybe your phone? Well, if you guessed either one of those options, you're dead wrong. It's bits per second (bps). Not just any old bps. We're talking about bits per second (bps) as a measure of transfer rates. Bit per second (bps) is a measure that shows the average data transfer rate between a computer and a data transmission system. A bit is the smallest unit of information in computing, and it can be either a one or zero. A byte is eight bits. The total number of bits transmitted per second equals eight times the number of bytes sent. In other words, if you have a gigabyte-per-second bandwidth, you're sending 1,000,000,000 bytes per second which work out to 125 MBps (megabytes per second). Sometimes, it takes much work to track how fast data is moving. After all, most of us are used to measuring things in kilos and grams, not megabytes and gigabytes. So how do you measure the speed at which your computer sends and receives the information? The standard unit is bits per second or bps. With so many different types of data being transmitted (such as email, video streams and web pages), it can be more convenient for everyday consumers to think about their internet connection in kilobytes per second (kBps). An International System Unit (SI) prefix was created SI prefixes include kilo-, mega- and giga-. So if you want to know how much faster your new internet connection will be than your old one, look for a number followed by Kbps or Mbps.
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