Okay, you’re about to buy, upgrade or move your server(s) and Internet connectivity. When you read hosting service provider pages this small connectivity component has lots of fancy names, units to measure. For pretty similar services prices may range from zero to amounts comparable to small country defense budget. I’ll try to make it very simple, so next times you will be able to compare apples to apples. As ultimate goal you’ should be able to find cheapest way to make bits and Bytes to move between your server and customer the way you like.
1. Some theory: Units
Lot of confusion is seeded in very beginning all these 100MBps 64K or even $25@95Pecentile should be decrypted ASAP.
Simplest is the time. All things are measured in seconds (s) and months. Month is usually what it actually is, ranging from 2,419,200 seconds for short February (60×60x24×28) to 2,678,400 seconds for 31-day month. To make quick calculations in your head it is useful to remember month is approximately 2,6 Millions seconds. Okay, to be precise astronomical year is 31,558,149.8 seconds, so average month is 31,558,149.8/12=2629845.81(6) but this should be left for astronomers, 2.6 Millions seconds is number precise enough to remember.
Bits and Bytes. One byte is 8 bits, believe it or not. Bit is small and small “b” should be used. Byte is bigger – big “B” should be used. BUT. But lot of descriptions and price lists tend to omit or confuse “B” and “b”. Rule of thumb would be to assume we talk Bits when we talk about speed and we talk bytes when we talk about amounts. But it is always worth making sure, this is 8 times different!
Kilo kilo Giga Mega. One kilometer is 1000 meters. One kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Rigt? Wrong! Strictly speaking k stands for 1000 and K stands for 1024, but reality is different.
Binary multipliers are used for memory and storage capacity description. Decimals are used for traffic.
| bit | b | 0 or 1 |
| byte | B | 8 bits |
| kilobit | kb | 1000 bits |
| kilobyte (binary) | KB | 1024 bytes |
| kilobyte (decimal) | KB | 1000 bytes |
| Megabit | Mb | 1000 kilobits |
| Megabyte (binary) | MB | 1024 Kilobytes |
| Megabyte (decimal) | MB | 1000 Kilobytes |
| Gigabit | Gb | 1000 Megabits |
| Gigabyte (binary) | GB | 1024 Megabytes |
| Gigabyte (decimal) | GB | 1000 Megabytes |
So if you have 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. For storage it is 1 Terabyte exactly. If you transfer it it is 1.099 Terabytes or 8.79 Terabits.
Some years ago storage manufacturers figured out there they can create even more mess (and increase disk size by 7% just by changing sticker) and started using decimal notation on hard disks.
Enough mess for today,
have a good Weekend.
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