KB/s to Tbps

1 kilobyte per second equals 8×10⁻⁹ terabits per second exactly.

1 kilobyte per second = 8×10⁻⁹ terabits per second

How to convert kilobytes per second to terabits per second

To convert kilobytes per second to terabits per second, multiply the number of kilobytes per second by 8×10⁻⁹. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply terabits per second by 125,000,000.

terabits per second = kilobytes per second × 8×10⁻⁹

Example: 10 kilobytes per second = 8×10⁻⁸ 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

Kilobyte Per Second (kB/s)

ComputingCurrent unit

1,000 bytes per second (8 kbps). Download managers and browsers show speeds in kB/s.

Few units have had a messier history than the kilobyte. Computers had long used kilo for 1,024 because it is close to 1,000, and early floppy disks show the muddle: the Shugart SA-400 of 1976 held 109,375 bytes and was advertised as 110 Kbyte, while the Tandon double-density drive of 1978 held 368,640 bytes and was advertised as 360 KB. In 1998 the IEC specified that kilobyte should refer only to 1,000 bytes and created the kibibyte for 1,024.

The internationally recommended symbol is kB, and a kilobyte per second is 1,000 bytes per second, or 8 kbit/s. Browsers and download managers often report speeds this way, which is why a connection sold as 8 Mbit/s shows up as about 1,000 kB/s on a file transfer. Some software still divides by 1,024 and labels the result KB, so numbers from different programs may differ by a few percent.

1 kilobyte per second = 8,000 bits per second (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilobyte; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Data-rate units

Terabit Per Second (Tbps)

ComputingCurrent unit

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

See all data transfer rate units.