Confused with kb/s and KB/s

[Elliot B.]

Our ISP allows us to download 250 GB per month.

When we reach the 250 GB monthly cap, our speed gets reduced.

According to this link, it's reduced to "256kb/s"

What speed is "256kb/s" in KB/s?

I am asking, because I thought "256kb/s" would be a quarter of a MB per second (I understand that would be KB/s but is "256kb/s" strictly kBITS/s?), but that is not what we're getting.

[ILikeTobacco]

http://www.ibeast.com/content/tools/band-calc.asp

[Mystic Mungis]

32KB/s, damn that's slow! Not sure what my cap is with BT but I download a lot of... Linux distros and I've never hit it.

[Elliot B.]

32KB/s, damn that's slow!

So 256kb/s, as it says on their website, is 32 KB/s?

[+BudMan MVC]

There are 8 bits to a byte. So 256kbits/s would be 256/8 or 32KBytes/s

[Crisp]

8Kb = 1KB.

[ILikeTobacco]

So 256kb/s, as it says on their website, is 32 KB/s?

It is marketing at its best. the 256kb/s means nothing to most people, including some people that understand technology. However, 256kb/s sounds better than 32 KB/s.

[Elliot B.]

Damn, I'll have to put up with 24-32 KB/s speeds for just over a week.

That's not even enough to play TF2 online, is it?

[Mystic Mungis]

So 256kb/s, as it says on their website, is 32 KB/s?

That's correct.

[Elliot B.]

It is marketing at its best. the 256kb/s means nothing to most people, including some people that understand technology. However, 256kb/s sounds better than 32 KB/s.

I thought that "256kb/s" is the same as "256 KB/s" - damn :(

[IceBreakerG]

I'm reading that as it'll be reduced to 256 kilobytes per second. It's just whoever typed it, didn't think about the difference between bits and bytes. I could be wrong, but at 256 kilobits per second, your connection would effectively had the rate of dial up, which, in my opinion, would be useless.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Same with HDD companies claiming it has 500MB.

Icebreaker, that says Kbps (Kilobits per second)

[pes2013]

Lets translate if you want :)

First:

GB = Gigabyte

gb = Gigabit

KB = Kilobyte

kb = kilobit

1 GB = 8 gb

1 KB = 8 kb

1 GB = 1048576 KB

1 kb = 0.125 KB

Once we got that a bit ( :p ) out the way.....

250 GB = 262144000 KB

256 kb = 31.25 KB

I hope this cleared up some things and did not confuse you more :)

[LaP]

I'm reading that as it'll be reduced to 256 kilobytes per second. It's just whoever typed it, didn't think about the difference between bits and bytes. I could be wrong, but at 256 kilobits per second, your connection would effectively had the rate of dial up, which, in my opinion, would be useless.

hystorically connection speed has been rated in bits.

Dial up was 56Kbits/s and a little more with data compression (or less before 2000) which was far lower than 32KB/s.

[pes2013]

I'm reading that as it'll be reduced to 256 kilobytes per second. It's just whoever typed it, didn't think about the difference between bits and bytes. I could be wrong, but at 256 kilobits per second, your connection would effectively had the rate of dial up, which, in my opinion, would be useless.

It is useless.

The person who typed it up DID not make a mistake for two reasons:

1: Thats how low it actually is

2: If they mistyped it, it would be false advertisement and lawsuit.

[LaP]

It is useless.

The person who typed it up DID not make a mistake for two reasons:

1: Thats how low it actually is

2: If they mistyped it, it would be false advertisement and lawsuit.

Anyway 256KB/s is still kinda high. You can download a 720p mkv file in around 5 or 6 hours at this speed. There would be no point to reduce the speed if people could still download HD movies in less than a day.

32KB/s is kinda low tough. 64KB/s would have been more resonable.

[pes2013]

Any company can actually advertise this and get away with it:

"BRAND NEW COMPANY WITH AWESOME INTERNET SPEEDS. guaranteed 458752 bPS!"

Sounds like a big number right? Wrong. They would be just selling dialup.

[Elliot B.]

I have ran speed tests on various websites. Results are (down/up):

1.23 Mb/s / 0.104 Mb/s

276 kbps / 59 kbps

215.73 Kbps (0.2 Mbps) / 59.98 Kbps (0.1 Mbps)

243 kbps / 36 kbps

So yep, I'm restricted to 32 KB/s for the next week. Ouch.

Who would have thought we pay ?17.50 (not inc. line rental) for this connection :pinch:

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Better than 56Kbps....

[IceBreakerG]

Eh, either way, it'd make more sense if they were consistent with it, with Kbps = kilobits per second and KBps being kilobytes per second. On another note though, 250GB a month is a lot of data. I usually hit around 80-90GB a month on my DSL connection, and I download quite a bit of stuff weekly, not to mention Netflix and youtube regularly.

[LaP]

Better than 56Kbps....

My first internet connection was a 9600 text connection. We (me and my friends) had to use a hack and connect to the server using telnet and install a small nix app in our home folder on the server to access the internet connection of the server via our 9600 text connection using telnet. Ah those were the good ol days XD.

The cie never got us doing it rofl

Also note that sometime companies rate 1kbits/s as 1000bits/s while file download softwares will consider 1KB/s to be 1024bytes/s. So 256kbits/s might not be 32KB/s but 31.25KB/s

[+BudMan MVC]

So you went over your 250GB already for this month? its only the 10th of the Month -- or does your month end on different days?

Im on comcast and they have a 250GB limit as well, and have never even gotten close to it.. Here are last few months of usage

I would look into better tracking of your usage, so if you do have some big downloads you want to do time them for near month end so if you do go over your only restricted for a couple of days at most.

[Elliot B.]

So you went over your 250GB already for this month? its only the 10th of the Month -- or does your month end on different days?

Im on comcast and they have a 250GB limit as well, and have never even gotten close to it.. Here are last few months of usage

<image snipped>

I would look into better tracking of your usage, so if you do have some big downloads you want to do time them for near month end so if you do go over your only restricted for a couple of days at most.

We have two family members who use Netflix in two separate rooms, and they watch HD content each. I also review PC games, so have to download 15 GB of ISOs from our company weekly for this purpose alone.

We used 250 GB in 21 days.

To be fair, we have only had the connection for 3 weeks and we only found out last week that we can download as much as we want between 00:00 and 08:00 without it affecting the cap. Since we were never informed of this period (in fact, one person at the ISP said it was "unlimited at all times" and one said we'd only be dropped to 2Mbps and not 0.125Mbps), we are currently going through a complaints procedure with them.

They said "it was all over the website" but we ordered by phone. Just because we can look on the website, doesn't mean people should have to look at the website. Such conditions should be mentioned during the phone order, especially when asked (which we did).

[+BudMan MVC]

So lets see 15x4 = 60 + Netflix bandwidth

http://support.netfl...de/87#gsc.tab=0

There are 3 settings to choose from:

• Good quality (uses up to 0.3 GB per hour)
  
• Better quality (uses up to 0.7 GB per hour)
  
• Best quality (uses up to 1 GB per hour, or up to 2.3 GB per hour if watching HD)
  

So even at 2.3GB /hour your looking at in 3 weeks minus even your 60GB for the month your looking at what 80 hours of HD video to hit your limit..

Really you watched 80 hours of video in 3 weeks?

That's crazy dude! Might want to look on changing your video settings on netflix ;) Or bringing in another line.. Setup one for netflix only - so your looking at 250/2.3 or 108 hours of video a month. And then the other 250 you can use for internet and your isos you need to download.

I agree with you that they should of atleast mentioned looking at the website for their TOS and bandwidth restrictions. But to be honest it is up to the buyer understands limits, not the other way around. If when you ordered someone stated you had unlimited -- then sure you have a legit complaint.

[ILikeTobacco]

They said "it was all over the website" but we ordered by phone. Just because we can look on the website, doesn't mean people should have to look at the website. Such conditions should be mentioned during the phone order, especially when asked (which we did).

An ISP saying it is all over the website is like a cable company saying it was all over the commercial. How do you get access to those things before you buy access to them. They can't expect you to get information from a source that requires their service to reach the source.

That's crazy dude! Might want to look on changing your video settings on netflix ;) Or bringing in another line.. Setup one for netflix only - so your looking at 250/2.3 or 108 hours of video a month. And then the other 250 you can use for internet and your isos you need to download.

And maybe get your job to pay for the extra line since it is for their profit.