B/s to MB/s
1 byte per second equals 0.000001 megabytes per second exactly.
How to convert bytes per second to megabytes per second
To convert bytes per second to megabytes per second, multiply the number of bytes per second by 0.000001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply megabytes per second by 1,000,000.
megabytes per second = bytes per second × 0.000001
Example: 10 bytes per second = 0.00001 megabytes per second.
Network speeds are quoted in bits per second (lowercase b), while file sizes use bytes (uppercase B). Divide Mbps by 8 for MB/s.
About these units
Byte Per Second (B/s)
Eight bits per second.
Byte is a younger word than bit. Werner Buchholz coined it in June 1956 during the early design of the IBM Stretch computer, deliberately spelling it with a y so that nobody would mistake it for bit. At first it had no fixed size, and Stretch's early design allowed groups of one to six bits. Eight-bit bytes were then built into Stretch, and IBM's System/360 spread them widely in the 1960s. Another person, Louis Dooley, has also claimed to have coined the term at MIT Lincoln Laboratory around 1956 or 1957.
A byte per second is eight bits per second, the smallest rate counted in bytes. Protocol documents that need to avoid any ambiguity often use the word octet for exactly eight bits. The unit is tiny by modern standards. On serial links, start, stop and parity bits mean the line must run at a higher bit rate than the byte rate alone suggests.
1 byte per second = 8 bits per second (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Byte; Wikipedia: Bit rate; Wikipedia: Data-rate units
Megabyte Per Second (MB/s)
1,000,000 bytes per second (8 Mbps). Disk and download speeds are shown in MB/s.
Megabytes per second inherit all the confusion of the megabyte itself. The word has meant 1,000,000 bytes in networking, hard drives and DVDs, 1,048,576 bytes for memory under Microsoft Windows, and 1,024,000 bytes for the 3.5-inch floppy disk marketed as 1.44 MB, which actually held 1,474,560 bytes. In 1999 the IEC defined megabyte as 10⁶ bytes and mebibyte as 2²⁰ bytes, and by the end of 2009 the IEEE, EU, ISO and NIST had adopted that standard.
As a rate, 1 MB/s is 1,000,000 bytes per second, or 8 Mbit/s. File copies, game installers and disk benchmarks usually show MB/s, while internet plans use Mbit/s, so a 100 Mbit/s plan tops out near 12.5 MB/s. As a feel for size, about one minute of 128 kbit/s MP3 audio fits in roughly 1 MB, so a link carrying 1 MB/s moves about a minute of such audio every second.
1 megabyte per second = 8,000,000 bits per second (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Megabyte; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Data-rate units
Related conversions
- MB/s to B/s (reverse)
- B/s to bps
- B/s to Kbps
- B/s to Mbps
- B/s to Gbps
- B/s to Tbps
- B/s to KB/s
- B/s to GB/s
- B/s to MiB/s
- Bps to MB/s
- Kbps to MB/s
- Mbps to MB/s
- Gbps to MB/s
- Tbps to MB/s
- KB/s to MB/s
- GB/s to MB/s
- MiB/s to MB/s
- Kibit/s to MB/s
- Mibit/s to MB/s
- Gibit/s to MB/s
- KiB/s to MB/s
See all data transfer rate units.