Kbps to Mibit/s
1 kilobit per second equals 0.0009536743164 mebibits per second (rounded).
How to convert kilobits per second to mebibits per second
To convert kilobits per second to mebibits per second, multiply the number of kilobits per second by 0.0009536743164. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply mebibits per second by 1,048.576.
mebibits per second = kilobits per second × 0.0009536743164
Example: 10 kilobits per second = 0.009536743164 mebibits 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
Kilobit Per Second (kbps)
1,000 bits per second. Used for voice calls and low-rate links.
Kilobit rates belong to the age of telephone wires. In 1962 AT&T introduced the Bell 103A, a full-duplex modem that sent 300 bit/s over ordinary phone lines, and by 1976 the Bell 212A had reached 1,200 bit/s. Speeds then climbed in steps through the 1990s, until the V.90 standard approved in 1998 offered 56 kbit/s downstream, with 33.6 kbit/s going the other way. That ceiling defined the dial-up era for many home users.
A kilobit per second is 1,000 bit/s, using the standard SI meaning of kilo, and it is still the natural unit for anything lightweight. A digital voice channel using PCM takes 64 kbit/s. MP3 files are often encoded at 128 kbit/s as a mid-range setting, with 320 kbit/s the highest the format supports. Divide by eight to get bytes: 8 kbit/s is 1 kB/s, so a 56 kbit/s modem moves about 7 kB/s, and fetching a 1 MB file over it would take roughly two and a half minutes.
1 kilobit per second = 1,000 bits per second (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Modem (Bell 103, 212A, V.90 history); Wikipedia: Bit rate (voice and MP3 rates); Wikipedia: Kilobit
Mebibit Per Second (Mibit/s)
1,048,576 bits per second.
Mebibits per second sit one binary step above the kibibit and measure the speeds of links and streams when a strict power of two is wanted. Mebi comes from mega with the same bi ending, and the quantity is 2 to the power 20, or 1,048,576. The IEC prefixes were meant to end a long confusion in computing, where kilo, mega and giga had been used for powers of 2 even though the SI gives them powers of 10.
The arithmetic is simple. One mebibit per second is 1,048,576 bits per second, which equals 131,072 bytes per second and is about 4.86 percent more than a decimal megabit per second. Wikipedia's article on data-rate units notes that decimal prefixes are typically used for data rates, so the mebibit per second is a precise but uncommon alternative. The IEEE adopted the prefix names in 1996 with the symbols Ki, Mi and Gi, and its standard 1541-2002 became a full-use standard in 2005.
1 mebibit per second = 1,048,576 bits per second (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Binary prefix; Wikipedia: Data-rate units; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples
Related conversions
- Mibit/s to Kbps (reverse)
- Kbps to bps
- Kbps to Mbps
- Kbps to Gbps
- Kbps to MB/s
- Kbps to Tbps
- Kbps to B/s
- Kbps to KB/s
- Kbps to GB/s
- Kbps to MiB/s
- Kbps to Kibit/s
- Kbps to Gibit/s
- Kbps to KiB/s
- Bps to Mibit/s
- Mbps to Mibit/s
- Gbps to Mibit/s
- MB/s to Mibit/s
See all data transfer rate units.