Gbps to Tbps
1 gigabit per second equals 0.001 terabits per second exactly.
How to convert gigabits per second to terabits per second
To convert gigabits per second to terabits per second, multiply the number of gigabits per second by 0.001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply terabits per second by 1,000.
terabits per second = gigabits per second × 0.001
Example: 10 gigabits per second = 0.01 terabits 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)
Terabit Per Second (Tbps)
10¹² bits per second. The scale of backbone and undersea cables.
Terabit speeds appear where many signals are combined. A single optical fiber can carry dozens of wavelengths at once through dense wavelength-division multiplexing, and modern undersea cables bundle many fiber pairs, so a typical cable can carry tens of terabits per second overseas. A satellite, by comparison, typically offers about 1 Gbit/s, a ratio of more than 1,000 to 1.
One terabit per second is 10¹² bit/s, or 125 GB/s. At that rate a 25 GB Blu-ray disc worth of data would cross the link in a fifth of a second. Ethernet is moving into this range as well. IEEE approved 800 Gigabit Ethernet in February 2024 under 802.3df, and a separate project, 802.3dj, was started in November 2022 to cover 1.6 Tbit/s. Ordinary users rarely meet the unit directly, since it describes capacity shared among many people.
1 terabit per second = 1,000,000,000,000 bits per second (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Submarine communications cable; Wikipedia: Terabit Ethernet; NIST: Metric (SI) prefixes
Related conversions
- Tbps to Gbps (reverse)
- Gbps to bps
- Gbps to Kbps
- Gbps to Mbps
- Gbps to MB/s
- 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 Tbps
- Kbps to Tbps
- Mbps to Tbps
- MB/s to Tbps
- B/s to Tbps
- KB/s to Tbps
- GB/s to Tbps
- MiB/s to Tbps
See all data transfer rate units.