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1 Mbit = ? bytes

Asked 2011-04-28T20:36:47.077
23

I always get confused about this. Is there a "standard" conversion of Megabits to bytes?

Is it:

 1 Megabit == 1,000,000 bits == 125,000 bytes

Or:

 1 Megabit == 2^20 bits == 1,048,576 bits == 131,072 bytes
standards bit megabyte
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3 Answers

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One megaoctet (only the same as a megabyte if each byte has eight bits) is eight megabits. Exactly the same conversion applies as for megabytes.

  • A one "megabit" RAM, ROM, or flash memory chip has 10242 mebibits (Mibit) = 1 048 576 bits.

  • A one megabit per second Internet connection can transfer 10002 megabits (Mbit) = 1 000 000 bits per second.

So four different conversions of "megabits" to "megabytes" may apply (assuming that each byte does have eight bits):

  • 1 Mibit (mebibit) = 8 MiB (mebibytes) = 8 388 608 B = 8.388608 MB (megabytes)
  • 1 Mbit (megabit) = 8 MB (megabytes) = 8 000 000 B ≈ 7.6294 MiB (mebibytes)
answered 2011-04-28T21:27:29.927
1

It's the former.

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

answered 2011-04-28T20:40:15.420
0

It may vary by industry. Component manufacturers offering FLASH products advertise their products as "1Mbit" and contain "131,072 bytes". (Reference: SST's 1 Mbit SPI Bus Serial FLASH (PDF Datasheet); indexable addresses 0h-1FFFFh)

answered 2011-04-28T20:52:16.150

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