MB/s = Megabyte or Megabit?? inconsistant usage

[randfee]

Sorry for reassuring myself here but I am confused. Many people in these forums seem to talk about transfer rates and randomly switch between Megabyte/s and Megabit/s. Although the acronyms are very well defined (B=Byte, b=bit) they don't get used correctly many times. At least that is my impression!

Since I'm in the market for my first NAS I just wanted some reassurance about this. In the NAS-charts and tests, when talking about "MB/s" I guess that means MegaByte/s. As I said, I've stumbled across many occasions in the forum here where its just not clear to me and where people seem to end up in misunderstandings because of it.

Take this diagram for instance:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/images/stories/nas/qnap_ts439pro2/qnap_ts439pro2_benches.jpg

even though the y-axis says we're dealing with "MB/s", I can hardly believe that 800MByte/s were measured.... if so, I just don't understand how since the machine has no interface for transfering that kind of bandwidth!

 

[saturation]

Another item to keep in mind is that mega in megabit in now officially 1,000,000 bits.

In early 2000, the IEC voted to change the name, officially the 'old' megabit is now the mebibit, = 1048576 bits. It should be abbreviated as Mib.

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

 

[randfee]

true... but the error originating from a mix-up does not extend over three magnitudes

 

[thiggins]

All NAS throughput results are reported in MegaBytes per second (MB/s). I agree that forum posters sometimes use B and b improperly.

The results you refer to are indeed accurate. The explanation is noted in the yellow box at the top of each NAS chart. It is cached performance and depends on the RAM size of the system running the benchmark, the amount of RAM in the NAS and how write caching is handled by client and NAS OSes.

 

[randfee]

ok, good to know, thank. I just didn't get how a 1000Gbit/s system can deliver 800MByte/s.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Sorry for reassuring myself here but I am confused. Many people in these forums seem to talk about transfer rates and randomly switch between Megabyte/s and Megabit/s. Although the acronyms are very well defined (B=Byte, b=bit) they don't get used correctly many times. At least that is my impression!

And even more so when talking about network transfers...and then internet speeds, download rates, what speeds someone is to get from their ISP, etc etc.

 

[nasfan]

Officially isn't it MB for megabytes or mb for megabits? yet I see people use Mbps, or mbytes or whatever... really confusing.

I vote to stick this thread.

 

[Islanti]

The official definition is even more complicated...
MB is 1 million bytes.
Mb is 1 million bits.
MiB is 1024^2 bytes.
Mib is 1024^2 bits.

Link

 

[PowerMAC]

MB and Mb are okay and I understand what they mean.

Mib and MiB I just ignore, they keep confusing me and are just plain annoying!