Why Mbps?

Why do speeds still get quoted in bits per second? Its like saying my car does 193,121,280 mm per hour..... or 193 Mmmph

Because those are the units for data transmission speeds. Car speeds are expressed in mph.

Its like saying my car does 193,121,280 mm per hour..... or 193 Mmmph

What's wrong with kilometres per hour or as more commonly used in the UK miles per hour?

Mbps is OK for me as my long line rarely gets above 3meg shunted down it from the exchange, so why not Mbps?

Harry

Until we get above Gbps as standard, Mbps will have to suffice.

It's always been done that way, mainly because there's no ambiguity- a bit is a bit.

These days it wouldn't be unreasonable to use megabytes/second on the basis that there are 8 bits in a byte, but it was not always thus.

Back in the day a byte could be anything from 4 to 8 bits depending on the system. Wiki has some history of the term.

It's just they way things have always been done. The speeds of serial data transmission systems are traditionally quoted in bits per second. SATA and USB are the most common examples.

I notice loop lengths are in kft.

Or even nine bits which is still in current use.

If the powers that be delivered a USC of 8Mbps throughput, we could all switch to 1 Meg (abytes) speak.

I prefer Mb to MB anyway. It helps to differentiate between data transfer and data storage.

In reply to a post by mrpaperclip:

Why do speeds still get quoted in bits per second?

Cuz the transmission is in bits. Not all the bits that are transmitted are actual data that you would see on your PC; some are protocol overheads (say about 17%), like the addresses of the sender and destination.

So when you download a file to your PC and you see it measured in Bytes, more bits than 8 x its Byte size were transferred to you over ADSL and the Net, and those bits have to fit within your Bandwidth (i.e. Sync Speed).