What internet speed is enough? What home Internet speed do you really need? What to do if the Internet is used on two or more devices at once.

Hello, dear readers of the site!

You were probably interested baud rate over the network (including the Internet), write speed to a flash drive (or hard drive). Today we will understand the speed of information transfer in computer technology and find out how many megabytes are in a megabit?!

The information from the previous lesson will be useful to you; if you haven’t read it yet, be sure to start there.

Let me remind you that in the last IT lesson we dealt with bits, bytes and multiple prefixes K, M, G, T and found out how many bytes are in a kilobyte (here is lesson 15).

Do you remember? Then let's begin!

Baud Rate - Units

The minimum unit of measurement for data transfer speed is taken to be bits per second, (which is not surprising, because a bit is the smallest unit of measurement of the amount of information).

Bits per second or bit/s(in English bits per second or bps) is the basic unit used to measure the speed of information transfer in computing.

Since when measuring the amount of information, not only bits, but also bytes are used, the speed can also be measured in bytes per second. Let me remind you that one byte contains eight bits (1 Byte = 8 bits).

Bytes per second or Bytes/s(in English byte per second or Byte/s) is also a unit that measures the speed of information transfer (1 Byte/s = 8 bits/s).

* I would like to ask you to immediately note that when reducing bits written with a small letter " b» ( bit/s), A bytes written with a capital letter " B"(M B/s).

Copying prohibited

Today, the Internet is needed in every home no less than water or electricity. And in every city there are a lot of companies or small firms that can provide people with access to the Internet.

The user can choose any package for using the Internet from a maximum of 100 Mbit/s to a low speed of, for example, 512 kB/s. How to choose the right speed and the right Internet provider for yourself?

Of course, Internet speed must be chosen based on what you do online and how much you are willing to pay per month for Internet access. From my own experience, I want to say that a speed of 15 Mbit/s quite suits me as a person who works on the network. When working on the Internet, I have 2 browsers turned on, and each has 20-30 tabs open, and problems arise more from the computer side (working with a large number of tabs requires a lot of RAM and a powerful processor) than from the Internet speed. The only time when you have to wait a little is the moment you first launch the browser, when all the tabs are loaded at the same time, but usually this takes no more than a minute.

1. What do Internet speed values ​​mean?

Many users confuse Internet speed values, thinking that 15Mb/s is 15 megabytes per second. In fact, 15Mb/s is 15 megabits per second, which is 8 times less than megabytes and as a result we will get about 2 megabytes of download speed for files and pages. If you usually download movies for viewing with a size of 1500 MB, then at a speed of 15 Mbps the movie will download in 12-13 minutes.

We look at a lot or a little of your Internet speed

• The speed is 512 kbps 512 / 8 = 64 kBps (this speed is not enough for watching online video);
• The speed is 4 Mbit/s 4 / 8 = 0.5 MB/s or 512 kB/s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 480p);
• The speed is 6 Mbit/s 6 / 8 = 0.75 MB/s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 720p);
• The speed is 16 Mbit/s 16 / 8 = 2 MB/s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 2K);
• The speed is 30 Mbit/s 30 / 8 = 3.75 MB/s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 4K);
• The speed is 60 Mbit/s 60 / 8 = 7.5 MB/s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
• The speed is 70 Mbit/s 60 / 8 = 8.75 MB/s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
• The speed is 100 Mbit/s 100 / 8 = 12.5 MB/s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality).

Many people who connect to the Internet are worried about the ability to watch online video. Let’s see what kind of traffic is needed for films of different quality.

2. Internet speed required to watch online videos

And here you will find out how much or how little your speed is for watching online videos with different quality formats.

We see that all the most popular formats are reproduced without problems at an Internet speed of 15 Mbit/s. But to watch video in 2160p (4K) format you need at least 50-60 Mbit/s. but there is one BUT. I don’t think that many servers will be able to distribute videos of this quality while maintaining such a speed, so if you connect to the Internet at 100 Mbit/s, you may not be able to watch online videos in 4K.

3. Internet speed for online games

When connecting home Internet, every gamer wants to be 100% sure that his Internet speed will be sufficient to play his favorite game. But as it turns out, online games are not at all demanding on Internet speed. Let's consider what speed popular online games require:

1. DOTA 2 - 512 kbps.
2. World of Warcraft - 512 kbps.
3. GTA online - 512 kbps.
4. World of Tanks (WoT) - 256-512 kbit/sec.
5. Panzar - 512 kbit/sec.
6. Counter Strike - 256-512 kbps.

Important! The quality of your online game depends less on the speed of the Internet than on the quality of the channel itself. For example, if you (or your provider) receive Internet via satellite, then no matter what package you use, the ping in the game will be significantly higher than that of a wired channel with a lower speed.

4. Why do you need an Internet connection of more than 30 Mbit/s?

In exceptional cases, I might recommend using a faster connection of 50 Mbps or more. Not many will be able to provide such a speed in full, the Internet to Home company has been in this market for many years and completely inspires confidence, all the more important is the stability of the connection, and I want to believe that they are at their best here. A high speed Internet connection may be necessary when working with large amounts of data (downloading and uploading it from the network). Perhaps you are a fan of watching movies in excellent quality, or download large games every day, or upload large videos or work files to the Internet. To check the connection speed, you can use various online services, and to optimize the work you need to perform.

By the way, a speed of 3 Mbit/s and lower usually makes working on the network a little unpleasant, not all sites with online video work well, and downloading files is generally not pleasant.

Be that as it may, today there is plenty to choose from in the Internet services market. Sometimes, in addition to global providers, the Internet is offered by small-town companies, and often the level of their service is also excellent. The cost of services in such companies is, of course, much lower than that of large companies, but as a rule, the coverage of such companies is very insignificant, usually within an area or two.

Question from a user

Hello.

Please tell me, I have an Internet channel of 15/30 Megabit/s, files in uTorrent are downloaded at a speed of (approximately) 2-3 MB/s. How can I compare the speed, is my Internet provider cheating me? How many Megabytes should there be at a speed of 30 Megabit/s? Confused about the quantities...

Good day!

This question is very popular; it is asked in different interpretations (sometimes very threateningly, as if someone had deceived someone). The bottom line is that most users confuse different units : both grams and pounds (also Megabits and Megabytes).

In general, to solve this problem you will have to resort to a short excursion to a computer science course, but I will try not to be boring 👌. Also in the article, I will also discuss all the issues related to this topic (about speed in torrent clients, about MB/s and Mbit/s).

👉 Note

Educational program on Internet speed

And so, with ANY Internet provider(at least, I personally haven’t seen others) Internet connection speed is indicated in Megabit/s (and pay attention to the prefix "BEFORE"- no one guarantees that your speed will always be constant, because... this is impossible).

In any torrent program(in the same uTorrent), by default, the download speed is displayed in MB/s(Megabytes per second). That is, I mean that Megabyte and Megabit are different quantities.

👉Usually, the stated speed in your tariff is enough Internet provider in Mbit/s, divide by 8 to get the speed that uTorrent (or its analogues) will show you in MB/s (but see more about this below, there are nuances).

For example, the tariff speed of the Internet provider about which the question was asked is 15 Mbit/s. Let's try to put it in a normal way...

👉 Important! (from a computer science course)

The computer does not understand numbers; only two values ​​are important to it: there is a signal or there is no signal (i.e. " 0 " or " 1 "). These are either yes or no - that is, "0" or "1" is called " Bit" (minimum unit of information).

In order to be able to write any letter or number, one unit or zero will clearly not be enough (it will definitely not be enough for the entire alphabet). It was calculated to encode all the necessary letters, numbers, etc. - a sequence of 8 Bit.

For example, this is what the code for the English capital "A" looks like - 01000001.

And so the code for the number “1” is 00110001.

These ones 8 Bits = 1 Byte(i.e. 1 Byte is the minimum data element).

Regarding consoles (and derivatives):

• 1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes (or 8*1024 Bits)
• 1 Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes (or KB/KB)
• 1 Gigabyte = 1024 Megabytes (or MB/MB)
• 1 Terabyte = 1024 Gigabytes (or GB/GB)

Mathematics:

1. One Megabit is equal to 0.125 Megabytes.
2. To achieve transfer speeds of 1 Megabyte per second, you will need an 8 Megabit per second network connection.

In practice, they usually do not resort to such calculations; everything is done simpler. The declared speed of 15 Mbit/s is simply divided by 8 (and ~5-7% is subtracted from this number for the transfer of service information, network load, etc.). The resulting number will be considered the normal speed (an approximate calculation is shown below).

15 Mbps / 8 = 1.875 MB/s

1.875 MB/s * 0.95 = 1.78 MB/s

In addition, I would not discount the load on the Internet provider's network during peak hours: in the evenings or on weekends (when a large number of people use the network). This can also seriously affect access speeds.

Thus, if you are connected to the Internet at a tariff 15 Mbit/s, and your download speed in the torrent program shows about 2 MB/s- everything is very good with your channel and Internet provider 👌. Usually, the speed is less than declared (my next question is about this, a couple of lines below).

👉 Typical question.

Why is the connection speed 50-100 Mbps, but the download speed is very low: 1-2 MB/s? Is the Internet provider to blame? After all, even according to rough estimates, it should be no lower than 5-6 MB/s...

I'll try to break it down point by point:

1. firstly, if you carefully look at the contract with the Internet provider, you will notice that you were promised access speed "UP TO 100 Mbit/s" ;
2. secondly, in addition to your access speed, it is very important where do you download the file(s) from?. Let's say, if the computer (from which you download the file) is connected via low-speed access, say 8 Mbit/s, then your download speed from it is 1 MB/s, in fact, the maximum! Those. First, try downloading the file from other servers (torrent trackers);
3. thirdly, perhaps you already have some kind of the program downloads something else. Yes, the same Windows can download updates (if in addition to your PC, you have a laptop, smartphone, etc. devices connected to the same network channel - look at what they are doing...). In general, check with what;
4. it is possible that in the evening hours (when the load on the Internet provider increases) there are “drawdowns” (you are not the only one who decided to download something interesting at this time ✌);
5. if you are connected via a router, check that too. It often happens that inexpensive models slow down the speed (sometimes they simply reboot), in general, they simply cannot cope with the load...
6. check driver for your network card(for example, to the same Wi-Fi adapter). I have encountered the situation several times: after on the network card (90% of the drivers for the network adapter are installed by Windows itself when installing it), access speed increased significantly! The default drivers that come with Windows are not a panacea...

However, I do not exclude the possibility that your Internet provider (with old equipment, clearly inflated tariffs, which are only theoretically available on paper) may be the culprit for the low access speed. Simply, to begin with, I would like you to pay attention to the above points...

👉 Another typical question

Why then indicate the connection speed in Mbit/s, when all users are guided by MB/s (and in programs it is indicated in MB/s)?

There are two points:

1. When transferring information, not only the file itself is transferred, but also other service information (some of which is less than a byte). Therefore, it is logical (and in general, historically) that connection speed is measured and indicated in Mbit/s.
2. The higher the number, the stronger the advertising! Marketing has not been canceled either. Many people are quite far from network technologies, and seeing that somewhere the number is higher, they will go there and connect to the network.

My personal opinion: for example, it would be nice if providers indicated next to Mbit/s the real data download speed that the user will see in uTorrent. Thus, both the wolves are fed and the sheep are safe 👌.

👉To help!

By the way, I recommend it to anyone who is dissatisfied with their Internet access speed.

Terms denoting Internet speed are extremely difficult to understand for a person who is far from this topic. For example, a provider offers an Internet service at a speed of 1 Mbit/sec, but you don’t know whether this is a lot or a little. Let's figure out what mbps is, and how Internet connection speed is measured in general.

Decoding the abbreviation

"mbps" ( mbit per second) - megabits per second. It is in these units that connection speed is most often measured. All providers indicate speed in megabits per second in their advertisements, so we should also understand these values.

How much is 1 mbps?

To begin with, we note that 1 bit is the smallest unit for measuring the amount of information. Along with a bit, people often use a byte, forgetting that these two concepts are completely different. Sometimes they say "byte" when they mean "bit", and vice versa. Therefore, it is worth considering this issue in more detail.

So, 1 bit is the smallest unit of measurement. 8 bits are equal to one byte, 16 bits are equal to two bytes, etc. That is, you just need to remember that a byte is always 8 times larger than a bit.

Given that both units are very small, in most cases the prefixes “mega”, “kilo” and “giga” are used for them. You should know what these prefixes mean from your school course. But if you forgot, it’s worth reminding:

1. "Kilo" is a multiplication by 1,000. 1 kilobit is equal to 1,000 bits, 1 kilobyte is equal to 1,024 bytes.
2. "Mega" - multiplication by 1,000,000. 1 megabit is equal to 1,000 kilobits (or 1,000,000 bits), 1 megabyte is equal to 1024 kilobytes.
3. "Giga" - multiplication by 1,000,000,000. Equals 1,000 megabits (or 1,000,000,000 bits), 1 gigabyte equals 1024 megabytes.

In simple terms, connection speed is the speed of information sent and received by a computer in one unit of time (per second). If the speed of your Internet connection is stated as 1 mbps, what does this mean? In this case, this means that your Internet speed is 1 megabit per second or 1,000 kilobits/second.

How much is that?

Many users believe that mbps is a lot. Actually this is not true. Modern networks are so developed that, given their capabilities, 1 mbps is nothing at all. Let's calculate this speed using the example of downloading files from the Internet.

Keep in mind that mbps is megabits per second. Divide the value of 1 by 8 and get megabytes. Total 1/8=0.125 megabytes/second. If we want to download music from the Internet, then provided that one track weighs 3 megabytes (usually tracks weigh that much), we can download it in 24 seconds. It’s easy to calculate: 3 megabytes (the weight of one track) needs to be divided by 0.125 megabytes/second (our speed). The result is 24 seconds.

But this only applies to an ordinary song. What if you want to download a movie that is 1.5 GB in size? Let's count:

• 1500 (megabytes) : 0.125 (megabytes per second) = 12,000 (seconds).

Converting seconds to minutes:

• 12,000: 60 = 200 minutes or 3.33 hours.

Thus, with an Internet speed of 1 mbps, we can download a 1.5 GB movie in 3.33 hours. Here you can judge for yourself whether it will take long or not.

Considering the fact that in large cities Internet providers offer Internet speeds of up to 100 mbps, we would be able to download a movie with the same volume in just 2 minutes, and not in 200. That is, 100 times faster. Based on this, we can come to the conclusion that mbps is a low speed.

However, everything is relative. In some remote village, where it is generally difficult to even get a GSM network, having Internet with such speed is cool. However, in a large metropolis with huge competition between providers and mobile operators, such a weak Internet connection cannot exist.

Conclusion

Now you know how to determine Internet speed, and you can understand a little about these units of measurement. Of course, getting confused in them is a piece of cake, but the main thing to remember is that a bit is an eighth of a byte. And the prefixes “kilo”, “mega” and “giga” only add three, six or nine zeros, respectively. If you understand this, then everything falls into place.

Or TCP/IP.

At higher levels of network models, a larger unit is typically used - bytes per second(B/c or Bps, from English b ytes p er s second ) equal to 8 bit/s.

Derived units

To denote higher transmission speeds, larger units are used, formed using the prefixes of the C system kilo-, mega-, giga- etc. getting:

• Kilobits per second- kbit/s (kbps)
• Megabits per second- Mbit/s (Mbps)
• Gigabits per second- Gbit/s (Gbps)

Unfortunately, there is ambiguity regarding the interpretation of prefixes. There are two approaches:

• kilobit is treated as 1000 bits (according to SI, as kilo gram or kilo meter), megabit as 1000 kilobits, etc.
• A kilobit is interpreted as 1024 bits, incl. 8 kbps = 1 KB/s (not 0.9765625).

To unambiguously designate a prefix divisible by 1024 (and not 1000), the International Electrotechnical Commission came up with the prefixes “ kibi"(abbreviated Ki-, Ki-), « furniture"(abbreviated Mi-, Mi-) etc.

• 1 byte- 8 bits
• 1 kibibit- 1024 bits - 128 bytes
• 1 mebibit- 1048576 bits - 131072 bytes - 128 kbytes
• 1 Gibibit- 1073741824 bits - 134217728 bytes - 131072 kbytes - 128 MB

The telecommunications industry has adopted the SI system for the prefix kilo. That is, 128 Kbit = 128000 bits.

Common mistakes

• Beginners often get confused kilobits c kilobytes, expecting a speed of 256 KB/s from a 256 kbit/s channel (on such a channel the speed will be 256,000 / 8 = 32,000 B/s = 32,000 / 1,000 = 32 KB/s).
• Bauds and bits/c are often (wrongly or intentionally) confused.
• 1 kbaud (as opposed to kbit/s) is always equal to 1000 baud.

see also

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what “Mbit/s” is in other dictionaries:

Mbit/s- Mbit/sec. megabits per second Mbit/sec. data transfer speed...

Mbit- Mb Mbit megabit Mbit Dictionary: S. Fadeev. Dictionary of abbreviations of the modern Russian language. St. Petersburg: Politekhnika, 1997. 527 p. Mbit International Bureau of Information and Telecommunications OJSC Moscow ... Dictionary of abbreviations and abbreviations

This article is about a unit of information. Other values: bit(s). Bit (English binary digit; also a play on words: English bit a little) (one binary digit in the binary system) is one of the most famous units of measuring information. In... ... Wikipedia

Mbps- Mbit/s Mbit/sec. megabits per second Mbit/sec. data transfer speed... Dictionary of abbreviations and abbreviations

optical carrier, level 3 (155.52 Mbit/s)- (ITU R F.1500). Topics: telecommunications, basic concepts EN optical carrier, level 3 (155.52 Mbit/s)OC3 ...

data transmission in the ISDN network at a speed of 2 Mbit/s- - [L.G. Sumenko. English-Russian dictionary on information technology. M.: State Enterprise TsNIIS, 2003.] Topics information technology in general EN megastream service ... Technical Translator's Guide- (ITU T Y.1541). Topics: telecommunications, basic concepts EN digital hierarchy transmission at 34 Mbit/sE3 ... Technical Translator's Guide