bps

Stands for "Bits Per Second." Bps is a standard way to measure data transfer rates, such as network connection and Internet download speeds.

In the early days of the Internet, data transfer speeds were measured in bps. As Internet connection speeds increased, a variation of bps – Kbps (1,000 bps) – became more common. Today, Internet connection speeds are often measured in Mbps (1,000,000 bps). Some networks support speeds over 1,000 Mbps and are measured in Gbps.

It is important to abbreviate bits per second as "bps" (with a lowercase "b"). The lowercase "b" signifies bits rather than bytes. Since a byte is eight bits, 100 Bps is equal to 800 bps. Variations of Bps, such as megabytes per second or gigabytes per second are typically abbreviated with a slash, such as MB/s or GB/s. These measurements are commonly used to define transfer speeds of internal components, such as HDDs and SSDs.

Updated February 20, 2014 by Per C.

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