Network Speed Converter

Converts across every network speed unit — bps through Tbps, B/s through GB/s — to settle the single most common point of confusion in networking: megabits versus megabytes.

The distinction that trips up everyone at least once

ISPs advertise in megabits per second, lowercase b. Operating systems show file transfer speed in megabytes per second, uppercase B. One byte is 8 bits, so a "1 Gbps" connection transfers files at roughly 125 MB/s — not 1,000 MB/s. It's a genuinely easy mistake to make even for people who know the rule, because the units look almost identical at a glance and the context doesn't always make it obvious which one you're looking at.

Reference speeds worth knowing cold

• 100 Mbps (Fast Ethernet) — 12.5 MB/s, a legacy office standard by now
• 1 Gbps — 125 MB/s, the current baseline for office networking
• 2.5 Gbps — 312.5 MB/s, increasingly common on newer Wi-Fi 6 and LAN hardware
• 10 Gbps — 1,250 MB/s, standard for server interconnects and storage networks
• 25/40/100 Gbps — data centre backbone territory, well past anything a workstation connection needs

Why ISPs advertise the way they do

"100 Mbps" sounds a lot faster than "12.5 MB/s," even though they're describing exactly the same connection — advertising in megabits simply produces a bigger number. When you're actually comparing broadband packages, or trying to work out how long a file transfer is going to take, divide the advertised Mbps figure by 8 to get the real-world MB/s you'll experience, and plan around that number rather than the one on the marketing page.