This local broadband info page on this site

I was looking through the local broadband information page on this site for my own area and I'm confused by the terms used, specifically Mbps and Mb. I enter my post code and its telling me;

In the last 6 months the download speed is 62.9 Mbps.

It is also telling me that within a 250 radius of my post code in the last 6 months;
Download: 28.8 Mbps and Upload: 5.4 Mbps.

So is this telling me that while downloading a file someone in the last 6 months is achieving a transfer speed of 62.9 Mbps ? So there sync speed must be much higher?

I file transfer at 8.2 Mbps when transfering a file and I'm on 67 Mb.

The reason I'm a little confused about the information is when I go to the offers page the first one that comes up is TalkTalk at Up to 38 Meg, yet it claims to have an upload speed of Up to 9.5 Mbps.

I thought Mbps is the transfer rate. So to get a transfer rate of 9.5 Mbps I would have to be above 70 Mb upload sync connection?

Can someone explain the above stats to see if I'm misunderstanding what as been wrote?

b - bits

B - Bytes


To get a 9.5Mbps upload the sync will need to be nominally 10Mbps or greater. Why do you think a 70 Mbps upload sync is required?

In reply to a post by MHC:

b - bits

B - Bytes


To get a 9.5Mbps upload the sync will need to be nominally 10Mbps or greater. Why do you think a 70 Mbps upload sync is required?

I think I've figured it out. It seems people are using different terms that mean the same thing. On the BT site they advertise packages as Mb. But on this site they are using Mbps, which going off another page I read mean the same thing.

I'm just surprised in my area its covered with Virgin Media yet I seem to be the fastest (or matching the fastest) connection. I would have imagined the stats would have been higher overall.

In your OP the possible misunderstanding is the difference between connection (sync) speeds, and data/file transfer speeds reported by whatever software is doing the transfer.

Connection speeds are measured in Mbps = Megabits per second, but file transfers are normally in MBps = MegaBytes per second. (Occasionally the "ps" is omitted). There are 8 bits in a byte. I'm expecting your file transfer is actually at 8.2MBps, which is 65.6Mbps.

Speed tests usually report Mbps as they are measuring bits passing compared with your sync. File transfers are measured in MBps because file sizes on disc or other storage are measured in Bytes/KiloBytes/MegaBytes/GigaBytes, so you can compare the transfer speed with the size of the file to see how it is going.

Does that help ?

Mega bits per second is the technically correct way of describing a broadband connection speed

When Mb (Megabits) is used you know that someone from marketing has written it, but they really mean Mega bits per second.

As for the speeds per postcode from speed tests, they may of course be someone with a faster connection, but they've not tested it, or they have one of the slower or legacy Virgin Media cable options.

I'd recommend the OP to look away now because (with a wicked grin on my face) I'm about to muddy the water.

It may be that the speed should be in Mib (Mebibits) or MiB (MebiBytes), being true representations of a power of two. Of course we all know that marketng departments long since corrupted Mega to represent one million (1,000,000) rather than 1,048,576 because that way they can claim that the disk they are trying to sell you is bigger than it really is. So too with bb speeds. That and they can't do binary arithmetic.

The ISO eventually took umbrage at the misuse of one of their prefixes and issued a set of binary equivalents, which we all ignore because we know really and the difference isn't worth quibbling about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte

John

Thanks for explaining things guys.

I think it was the marketing part that was throwing me. Then I noticed on the program I download with I had to quickly see what unit it was using.

All these terms do get confusing, especially when I first knew a MB was from the old computer disks 1.44 MB .

Ok, I feel old now!