Gbps to MB/s
1 gigabit per second equals 125 megabytes per second exactly.
How to convert gigabits per second to megabytes per second
To convert gigabits per second to megabytes per second, multiply the number of gigabits per second by 125. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply megabytes per second by 0.008.
megabytes per second = gigabits per second × 125
Example: 10 gigabits per second = 1,250 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
Gigabit Per Second (Gbps)
1,000,000,000 bits per second. Fiber and Ethernet speeds are quoted in Gbps.
Gigabit Ethernet came in two stages. IEEE 802.3z, produced in June 1998, was the first version and required optical fiber. IEEE 802.3ab, ratified in 1999, defined 1000BASE-T over four twisted pairs of ordinary copper cabling, which is what turned a backbone technology into something that could reach desktops. Over time, one gigabit per second became a built-in feature of many computers.
A gigabit per second is 1,000,000,000 bit/s, or 125 MB/s once the eight bits in a byte are accounted for. At that speed an ideal transfer of a 4.7 GB single-layer DVD image takes about 38 seconds. Ten Gigabit Ethernet, first defined in IEEE 802.3ae in 2002 and extended to twisted pair by 802.3an in 2006, multiplies this by ten and is common in data centers. Cable and DSL providers also quote gigabit figures; the G.fast DSL standard from 2014 tops out at 1 Gbit/s.
1 gigabit per second = 1,000,000,000 bits per second (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Gigabit Ethernet; Wikipedia: 10 Gigabit Ethernet; Wikipedia: Gigabyte (DVD capacity)
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 Gbps (reverse)
- Gbps to bps
- Gbps to Kbps
- Gbps to Mbps
- Gbps to Tbps
- Gbps to B/s
- Gbps to KB/s
- Gbps to GB/s
- Gbps to MiB/s
- Gbps to Kibit/s
- Gbps to Mibit/s
- Gbps to Gibit/s
- Gbps to KiB/s
- Bps to MB/s
- Kbps to MB/s
- Mbps to MB/s
- Tbps to MB/s
- B/s 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.