In telecommunications, data transfer rate is the average number of bits (bitrate), characters or symbols (baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are multiples of bits per second (bit/s) and bytes per second (B/s). For example, the data rates of modern residential high-speed Internet connections are commonly expressed in megabits per second (Mbit/s).

Standards for unit symbols and prefixes

Unit symbol

The ISQ symbols for the bit and byte are bit and B, respectively. In the context of data-rate units, one byte consists of 8 bits, and is synonymous with the unit octet. The abbreviation bps is often used to mean bit/s, so that when a 1 Mbps connection is advertised, it usually means that the maximum achievable bandwidth is 1 Mbit/s (one million bits per second), which is 0.125 MB/s (megabyte per second), or about 0.1192 MiB/s (mebibyte per second). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) uses the symbol b for bit.

Unit prefixes

In both the SI and ISQ, the prefix k stands for kilo, meaning 1000, while Ki is the symbol for the binary prefix kibi-, meaning 1024. The binary prefixes were introduced in 1998 by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and in IEEE 1541-2002 which was reaffirmed on 27 March 2008. The letter K is often used as a non-standard abbreviation for 1,024, especially in "KB" to mean KiB, the kilobyte in its binary sense. In the context of data rates, however, typically only decimal prefixes are used, and they have their standard SI interpretation.

Variations

In 1999, the IEC published Amendment 2 to "IEC 60027-2: Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2: Telecommunications and electronics". This standard, approved in 1998, introduced the prefixes kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, tebi-, pebi-, and exbi- to be used in specifying binary multiples of a quantity. The name is derived from the first two letters of the original SI prefixes followed by bi (short for binary). It also clarifies that the SI prefixes are used only to mean powers of 10 and never powers of 2.

Decimal multiples of bits

These units are often used in a manner inconsistent with the IEC standard.

Kilobit per second

Kilobit per second (symbol kbit/s or kb/s, often abbreviated "kbps") is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

Megabit per second

Megabit per second (symbol Mbit/s or Mb/s, often abbreviated "Mbps") is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

Gigabit per second

Gigabit per second (symbol Gbit/s or Gb/s, often abbreviated "Gbps") is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

Terabit per second

Terabit per second (symbol Tbit/s or Tb/s, sometimes abbreviated "Tbps") is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

Decimal multiples of bytes

These units are often not used in the suggested ways; see.

Kilobyte per second

kilobyte per second (kB/s) (sometimes abbreviated "kBps") is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

Megabyte per second

megabyte per second (MB/s) (can be abbreviated as MBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

Gigabyte per second

gigabyte per second (GB/s) (can be abbreviated as GBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

Terabyte per second

terabyte per second (TB/s) (can be abbreviated as TBps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

Conversion table

Examples of bit rates