Terabit (Tb)

ComputingCurrent unit

10¹² bits (125 GB).

1 terabit = 125,000,000,000 bytes (exactly).

1 terabit = 125,000,000,000 bytes

About the terabit

Network engineers reach for the terabit because link speeds are quoted in bits per second, and Wikipedia's article on the bit confirms that transfer rates conventionally use decimal SI multiples. One terabit is exactly 10^12 bits, which at eight bits per byte is 125,000,000,000 bytes, or 125 gigabytes. Tera, adopted into the SI in 1960, is the first prefix after giga.

The commonly used symbol is Tbit, and the IEEE 1541 standard recommends lowercase b, giving Tb. That shorthand is risky because capital B means byte, a factor of eight apart. In the IEC naming, a terabit is a decimal unit; its binary counterpart, the tebibit, is 2^40 bits, about 10 percent larger.

Because it is quoted in bits, the terabit suits data rates, where terabits per second describe very high-capacity links, and it is eight times smaller than the terabyte.

Sources: Wikipedia: Bit; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; Wikipedia: Binary prefix

Terabit conversion chart

1 terabit expressed in every other digital storage unit:

Unit1 terabit
Bytes125,000,000,000
Kilobytes125,000,000
Megabytes125,000
Gigabytes125
Terabytes0.125
Bits1,000,000,000,000
Petabytes0.000125
Kibibytes122,070,312.5
Mebibytes119,209.2896
Gibibytes116.4153218
Tebibytes0.1136868377
Kilobits1,000,000,000
Megabits1,000,000
Gigabits1,000
Exabytes1.25×10⁻⁷
Zettabytes1.25×10⁻¹⁰
Yottabytes1.25×10⁻¹³
Pebibytes0.0001110223025
Exbibytes1.084202172×10⁻⁷
Kibibits976,562,500
Mebibits953,674.3164
Gibibits931.3225746
Nibbles250,000,000,000

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