Broadband Speeds Help

SparciaM

How many KB is 1Mb/s? I'm on a BT 'upto' 7Mb/s but I tend to only get a max of 160KB/s - is that 1.6Mb/s or 0.16Mb/s - I've been told that 1Mb/s BB is actually 1023KB/s?!?

conspirator

there will be a converter online for such a question,

however BT have a bad rep and i would go with Virgin 20 MB,

pretty sure the costs will be roughly the same and the customer service will outshine BT.

hope that helps a little

SparciaM

Cant get Virgin as not in a cable area.

I've had no problems with BT ever. Their customer service is great and the internet connection is great. I'm just trying to work out if I should only be paying for 'upto' 2Mb/s instead of 'upto' 8Mb/s

SparciaM

Thanks to google I found it all out.

1MB/s = 8Mb/s so with an 'upto' 8Mb/s connection I'm getting an 'upto' 1MB/s connection.

1MB/s = 1024 KB.

So when I get a max of 150KB/s that works out at 0.15MB/s or 1.2Mb/s so really I only need a max of 2Mb/s download speed as my line in 26 months has never gone over 150KB/s.

So remember the Virgin 20Mb/s is actually 2.5MB/s which is 2560KB/s.

I never realised they were all different - you learn something new everyday. Time to sort BT out!!!

mrJ_5

if 160KB/s is your download speed - then you have a 1.44Mb ish connection

you only can download at a maximum of 1/9th of your connection speed - so if you had a 9Mb/s connection - you can download 1Mb/s

depending on how far you live from the exchange, and the quality of the phone cable, the speed you get varies - so I imagine that you must be about 3.5km ish away (not as the crow flies, but as the cable travels)

SparciaM

If you can only download a max of 1/9th of your BB, then I would only get a max of 0.8Mb/s - whereas I get 1.2Mb/s - where did you find out about the 1/9th thing?!?

As if 1/9th is true, then companies can't say 'upto' 8Mb/s as you'd NEVER get over 1Mb/s.

penrhyn

Perhaps the problem here is that there is still some confusion about the various units being used.

k = kilo = 1000
m = mega = 1,000,000.

The ones that cause confusion are:

b = 1 bit (Binary Digit) and B = 1Byte, there are 8 bits in one Byte, the byte can represent a single character.

So if you have a download speed of 7000 kilobits per second, then that will be the same as 7000/8 = 875 kilobytes per second

This is what I get on my BB link:
Download Speed: 6983 kbps (872.9 KB/sec ) Upload Speed: 320 kbps (40 KB/sec )