Gigabit Per Second (Gbps)

ComputingCurrent unit

1,000,000,000 bits per second. Fiber and Ethernet speeds are quoted in Gbps.

1 gigabit per second = 1,000,000,000 bits per second (exactly).

1 gigabit per second = 1,000,000,000 bits per second

About the gigabit per second

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.

Sources: Wikipedia: Gigabit Ethernet; Wikipedia: 10 Gigabit Ethernet; Wikipedia: Gigabyte (DVD capacity)

Gigabit Per Second conversion chart

1 gigabit per second expressed in every other data transfer rate unit:

Unit1 gigabit per second
Bps1,000,000,000
Kbps1,000,000
Mbps1,000
MB/s125
Tbps0.001
B/s125,000,000
KB/s125,000
GB/s0.125
MiB/s119.2092896
Kibit/s976,562.5
Mibit/s953.6743164
Gibit/s0.9313225746
KiB/s122,070.3125
GiB/s0.1164153218

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