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Converting bits to kbps, mbps, KB/sec

James Bond

James Bond

Diamond Member
I find myself looking at link utilization a lot, normally using Cisco routers. They always display the input/output rate in bits, ie:

5 minute input rate 143080 bits/sec, 32 packets/sec
5 minute output rate 16632 bits/sec, 27 packets/sec

Now, this is obviously great information, but I always have a hard time grasping how "much" bandwidth is being used because I'm not used to dealing with bits.

What do you guys do to make it more logical? Most of the time I just convert it to kbps using a calculator, but if theres a really simple way or trick, I would be interested.
 
8 bits = 1 Byte. b=bit B=Byte

When dealing with Networks there is always some functional loses and momentary fluctuations..

Thus doing scientifically right calculation is essential for school papers , but Not really needed for the real world.

So the rule of thumb is to translate to bits to Kb by 1/1000

And Kb to KB by 1/10 (should be 1/8, but in reality it is almost always less).

I.e. 143080 bits/sec., is about 143Kb/sec. that should yield transfer of info of about 14.3KB/sec.
 
What question is Bond asking? We can ask bits to bytes which is basically eight to one with the joker being start and stop bits, or we can ask the unanswerable question of what is a packet which is far more tricky.

I confess, packets confuse the hell out of me.
 
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