What home internet speed do you really need. What internet speed is enough? What is 1 Mbps

The terms denoting the speed of the Internet are extremely difficult to understand for a person who is far from this topic. For example, a provider offers the service of providing Internet at a speed of 1 Mbps, and you don’t know whether it’s a lot or a little. Let's figure out what it is - mbps, and how the speed of an Internet connection is generally measured.

Abbreviation decoding

"mbps" ( mbit per second) is a megabit per second. It is in these units that the connection speed is most often measured. All providers in their advertisements indicate the speed in megabits per second, so we should deal with 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 measure. 8 bits equals one byte, 16 bits equals two bytes, and so on. 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 they use the prefixes "mega", "kilo" and "giga". What these prefixes mean, you should know from the school course. But if you forgot, then it is worth recalling:

1. "Kilo" is multiplication by 1000. 1 kilobit is equal to 1000 bits, 1 kilobyte is equal to 1024 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" - multiplied by 1,000,000,000. equals 1,000 megabits (or 1,000,000,000 bits), 1 gigabyte is equal to 1024 megabytes.

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

How much is this

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

We take into account 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) must be divided by 0.125 megabytes / second (our speed). The result is 24 seconds.

But that only applies to normal songs. What if you want to download a 1.5 GB movie? Let's count:

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

Convert 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, judge for yourself whether it is long or not.

Given the fact that in large cities Internet providers offer Internet speeds of up to 100 mbps, we could download a movie with the same volume in just 2 minutes, not 200. That is, 100 times faster. Based on this, we can conclude that mbps is a low speed.

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

Conclusion

Now you know how to determine the speed of the Internet, 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.

Russia has a very good and, no less important, affordable home Internet. Really! In villages and a very deep province, things are, of course, worse, but take any, even a small city in the European part of the country and look at the tariffs. For 300-400 rubles a month, you can bring Internet to an apartment at a speed of around 25-50 megabits per second, and for some promotion, all 100 megabits.

For comparison: in "civilized" countries, fast Internet (both home and mobile) costs an order of magnitude more expensive. And the concept of “monthly data limit” still lives there. We have this left only with cellular operators.

However, cheapness is not a reason to pay for something that you do not use. Even a hundred rubles saved warms the wallet, and therefore the tariff for home Internet must be chosen based on real speed needs. Let's figure out how many megabits per second are required in various situations, and start with basic concepts.

Megabits, megabytes and real speeds

The data size is usually measured in bytes. For example, an HD movie weighs between 700 megabytes (megabytes) to 1.4 gigabytes (gigabytes), while Full HD is 4 to 14 gigabytes.

It is customary to indicate the data transfer rate in bits (not bytes!) Per second, and sometimes this causes misunderstanding.

Byte ≠ bit.

1 byte = 8 bits.

1 megabyte = 8 megabits.

1 megabyte per second = 8 megabits per second.

If the user does not distinguish between bytes and bits, then he can easily confuse them or take them for the same thing. In this case, it will calculate the approximate download time of an HD movie via torrent like this:

1. The film weighs 1,400 "mega".
2. Internet speed 30 "mega" per second.
3. The movie will download in 1400 / 30 = 46.6 seconds.

In fact, the Internet speed is 30 megabits per second = 3.75 megabytes per second. Accordingly, 1,400 megabytes should be divided not by 30, but by 3.75. In this case, the download time will be 1,400 / 3.75 = 373 seconds.

In practice, the speed will be even lower, because Internet providers indicate the speed "to", that is, the maximum possible, and not working. In addition, interference, especially when transmitting over Wi-Fi, network congestion, as well as limitations and features of user equipment and service provider equipment, all contribute. You can check your speed with , and increase it with .

Often the resource from which you download something becomes the neck. For example, your Internet speed is 100 megabits per second, and the site gives data at a speed of 10 megabits per second. In this case, the download will occur at a speed of no more than 10 megabits per second, and there is nothing to be done about it.

What internet speed do you really need

Obviously, the above table needs clarification.

Questions and answers

What to do if the Internet is used on two or more devices at once?

Let's say you're watching Full HD streaming video on a smart TV, your wife is surfing YouTube on a laptop with an HD screen, and your child is also watching something from a smartphone or tablet in HD quality. Does this mean that the numbers from the table need to be summed up?

Yes, absolutely right. In this case, you will need about 20 megabits per second.

Why do different sites have different speed requirements for watching videos of the same resolution?

There is such a thing as bitrate - the amount of information that encodes an image per unit of time, and, accordingly, a conditional indicator of picture and sound quality. The higher the bitrate, the better the image, as a rule. That is why on torrents you can find versions of the same movie with the same resolution, but different sizes.

In addition, there are ultra-smooth videos at 60 frames per second. They weigh more and require faster internet.

Is it true that online games are so undemanding to the speed of the Internet?

Yes, for most games like CS, Dota 2, WoT, WoW and even GTA 5, only one megabit per second is more than enough for multiplayer, but in this case, ping becomes decisive - the time it takes for a signal to travel from you to the game server and back. The lower the ping, the lower the delay in the game.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to know in advance even an approximate ping in a particular game through a particular provider, since its value is not constant and depends on many factors.

Why does the picture and sound from the interlocutors go to me normally during video calls, but not from me to them?

In this case, not only the incoming, but also the outgoing Internet speed becomes important. Often, providers do not indicate the outgoing speed in the tariff at all, but you can check it yourself using the same Speedtest.net.

For broadcasting through a webcam, an outgoing speed of 1 megabit per second is sufficient. In the case of HD cameras (and even more so Full HD), the requirements for outgoing speed increase.

Why do ISPs start at 20–30 or more megabits per second in tariffs?

Because the higher the speed, the more money you can take. Providers could keep tariffs "from the past" at a speed of 2-10 megabits per second and reduce their cost to 50-100 rubles, but why? It is much more profitable to increase the minimum speeds and prices.

However, imagine that you have a high speed Internet connection, you are unlikely to say “I have 57.344 bits”. It's much easier to say "I have 56 kB", isn't it? Or, you can say "I have 8 kb", which is actually exactly 56 kb, or 57.344 bits.

Let's take a closer look at how many megabits are in a megabyte.

The smallest measure of speed or size is Bit, followed by Byte, etc. Where, there are 8 bits in 1 byte, that is, when you say 2 bytes, you are actually saying 16 bits. When you say 32 bits, you are actually saying 4 bytes. That is, such measures of measurement as bytes, kbits, kbytes, mbits, mbs, GBs, GBs, etc. were invented so that you would not have to pronounce or write long numbers.

Just imagine that these units of measurement would not exist, how would the same gigabyte be measured in this case? Since 1 gigabyte is equal to 8.589.934.592 bits, wouldn't it be more convenient to say 1 gigabyte than to write such long numbers.

We already know what 1 bit is and what 1 byte is. Let's go further.

There is also a unit of measurement "kbit" and "kbyte", as they are also called "kilobit" and "kilobyte".

• Where, 1 kb is 1024 bits, and 1 kb is 1024 bytes.

• 1 kb = 8 kbps = 1024 bytes = 8192 bits

In addition, there are also “mbits” and “mbytes”, or as they are also called “megabits” and “megabytes”.

• Where, 1 Mbps = 1024 Kbps, and 1 Mbps = 1024 Kbps.

From this comes that:

• 1 MB = 8 Mbps = 8192 kbps = 65536 kbps = 8388608 bytes = 67108864 bits

If you think about it, everything becomes simple.

Now you guess how many megabits are in a megabyte?

It will be hard the first time, but you will get used to it. Try to go the easy way:

• 1 megabyte = 1024 kbytes = 1048576 bytes = 8388608 bits = 8192 kbps = 1024 kbps = 8 Mbps
• That is, 1 megabyte = 8 megabits.
• Similarly, 1 kilobyte = 8 kilobits.
• As in 1 byte = 8 bits.

Isn't it easy?

So, for example, you can find out the time for which you download one or another file. Let's say your Internet connection speed is 128 kilobytes per second, and the file you download on the Internet weighs 500 megabytes. How long do you think it will take to download the file?
Let's count.

To find out, you just need to understand how many kilobytes are in 500 megabytes. This is easy to do, just multiply the number of megabytes (500) by 1024, since there are 1024 kilobytes in 1 megabyte. We get the number 512000, this is the number of seconds for which the file will be downloaded, given the connection speed of 1 kilobyte per second. But, we have a speed of 128 kilobytes per second, so we divide the resulting number by 128. It remains 4000, this is the time in seconds for which the file will be downloaded.

Convert seconds to minutes:

• 4000 / 60 = ~66.50 minutes

Converting to hours:

• ~66.50 / 60 = ~1 hour 10 minutes

That is, our 500 megabyte file will be downloaded in 1 hour 10 minutes, given that the connection speed throughout the entire time will be exactly 128 kilobytes
per second, which equals 131.072 bytes, or to be more precise, 1.048.576 bits.

In today's article, we will deal with the measurement of information. All pictures, sounds and video clips that we see on monitor screens are nothing more than numbers. And these numbers can be measured, and, now, you will learn how to convert megabits to megabytes and megabytes to gigabytes.

If it is important for you to know how many mb in 1 GB or how many KB in 1 mb, then this article is for you. Most often, such data is needed by programmers who evaluate the volume occupied by their programs, but sometimes it does not interfere with ordinary users to estimate the size of downloaded or stored data.

In short, it is enough to know this:

1 byte = 8 bits

1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes

1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes

1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes

1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes

Common abbreviations: kilobyte=kb, megabyte=mb, gigabyte=gb.

Recently I received a question from my reader: "What is more kb or mb?". Hopefully now everyone knows the answer.

Information units in detail

In the information world, the decimal system of measurement, which is familiar to us, is not used, but binary. This means that one digit can take on a value not from 0 to 9, but from 0 to 1.

The simplest unit of information is 1 bit, it can be 0 or 1. But this value is very small for the modern amount of data, so bits are rarely used. Bytes are more commonly used, 1 byte is equal to 8 bits and can take a value from 0 to 15 (hexadecimal). True, instead of numbers 10-15, letters from A to F are used.

But even these volumes of data are small, therefore, the prefixes familiar to everyone are used: kilo- (thousand), mega- (million), giga- (billion).

It is worth noting that in the information world, a kilobyte is not equal to 1000 bytes, but 1024. And if you want to know how many kilobytes are in a megabyte, then you will also get the number 1024. When asked how many megabytes are in a gigabyte, you will hear the same answer - 1024.

This is also determined by the feature of the binary system of calculus. If, when using tens, we get each new digit by multiplying by 10 (1, 10, 100, 1000, etc.), then in the binary system a new digit appears after multiplying by 2.

It looks like this:

2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024

A number consisting of 10 binary digits can have as few as 1024 values. This is more than 1000, but closest to the usual prefix kilo-. Mega- and giga and tera-are applied in a similar way.

Question from user

Hello.

Please tell me, I have an Internet channel of 15/30 Mbps, files in uTorrent are downloaded at a speed of (approximately) 2-3 MB/s. How can I compare the speed, is my ISP cheating me? How many megabytes should be at a speed of 30 megabits / s? Confused by the numbers...

Good day!

A similar question is very popular, they ask it in different interpretations (sometimes, very menacingly, as if someone had deceived someone). The bottom line is that most users confuse different units : as grams and pounds (also Megabit and Megabyte).

In general, to solve this problem, you will have to resort to a small digression to the computer science course, but I will try not to be boring 👌. Also in the article along the way I will analyze all the questions regarding this topic (about speed in torrent clients, about MB / s and Mbps).

👉 Note

Educational program on Internet speed

And so, with ANY Internet provider(at least, I personally have not seen others) Internet connection speed is indicated in Megabit/s (moreover, pay attention to the prefix "BEFORE"- no one guarantees that your speed will always be constant; it's 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 am leading to the fact that Megabytes and Megabits are different values.

👉Usually, the declared speed in the tariff of your ISP in Mbps divided by 8 to get the speed that uTorrent (or its analogues) will show you in MB / s (but see more on this below, there are nuances).

For example, the rate of the Internet provider for which the question was asked is 15 Mbps. Let's try to translate it into a normal way ...

👉 Important! (from the computer science course)

The computer does not understand numbers, only two values ​​​​are important for 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" (the smallest unit of information).

In order to be able to write some letter or number, one unit or zero will obviously not be enough (it definitely won’t be enough for the whole alphabet). It has been calculated to encode all the necessary letters, numbers, etc. - a sequence of 8 Bit.

For example, the English capital "A" code looks like this - 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).

About prefixes (and derivatives):

• 1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes (well, 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)

Maths:

1. One megabit is equal to 0.125 megabytes.
2. To achieve a transfer rate of 1 megabytes per second, you will need a network connection with a speed of 8 megabits per second.

In practice, usually, they do not resort to such calculations, everything is made 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 normal speed (an approximate calculation is shown below).

15 Mbps / 8 = 1.875 Mbps

1.875 MB/s * 0.95 = 1.78 MB/s

In addition, I would not discount the load on the ISP 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 speed.

Thus, if you are connected to the Internet at the rate 15 Mbps, and your download speed in the torrent program shows about 2 MB/s- everything is very good with your channel and ISP 👌. Usually, the speed is less than declared (this is my next question, 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? Blame the ISP? After all, even according to approximate estimates, it should be at least 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 Mbps" ;
2. secondly, in addition to your access speed, it is very important that where are you downloading the file(s) from. Let's say if that computer (from which you are downloading a file) is connected via low-speed access, say 8 Mbps - then your download speed from it at 1 MB / s is, in fact, the maximum! Those. try to start downloading the file from other servers (torrent trackers);
3. thirdly, you may already have some kind of the program is downloading something else. Yes, the same Windows can download updates (if, in addition to a PC, you have a laptop, smartphone, etc. devices connected to the same network channel - see what they are doing ...). In general, check than ;
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 that time ✌);
5. If you are connected through a router - check it too. It often happens that inexpensive models cut speed (sometimes they just reboot), in general, they simply cannot cope with the load ...
6. check driver for your network card(for example, on the same Wi-Fi adapter). I have encountered the situation several times: after the network card (the driver for the network adapter in 90% is installed by Windows itself when it is installed), the speed of access increased significantly! The default drivers that come with Windows are not a panacea...

However, I do not rule out that your Internet provider (with old equipment, clearly overpriced tariffs that are only theoretically available on paper) may be the culprit for the low access speed. Just to start with, I wanted to pay attention to the above points ...

👉 Another typical question

Why then indicate the speed when connecting in Mbps, 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 transmitted, but also other service information (some of which is less than a byte). Therefore, it is logical (and indeed, historically so) that the connection speed is measured and indicated in Mbps.
2. the higher the number, the stronger the ad! Marketing has not been canceled either. Many people, they 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 the same uTorrent. Thus, both the wolves are fed and the sheep are safe 👌.

👉To help!

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