Mbps to GiB/s
1 megabit per second equals 0.0001164153218 gibibytes per second (rounded).
How to convert megabits per second to gibibytes per second
To convert megabits per second to gibibytes per second, multiply the number of megabits per second by 0.0001164153218. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply gibibytes per second by 8,589.934592.
gibibytes per second = megabits per second × 0.0001164153218
Example: 10 megabits per second = 0.001164153218 gibibytes 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
Megabit Per Second (Mbps)
1,000,000 bits per second. The unit of internet connection speeds; 8 Mbps is 1 MB/s.
Megabits entered everyday life through Ethernet. The original 10BASE5 version arrived in 1981 at 10 Mbit/s, Fast Ethernet raised the figure to 100 Mbit/s in 1995, and wireless followed, with 802.11b offering 11 Mbit/s in 1999. Telecommunications engineers had always meant exactly one million bits per second by the megabit, while computer memory vendors were stretching the word mega toward powers of two. That divergence is part of why the IEC later published separate binary prefixes.
Internet providers still sell service in Mbit/s, which is why a plan and a download counter seem to disagree. A byte is eight bits, so 100 Mbit/s is at most 12.5 MB/s, and a 1 GB file needs about 80 seconds at that rate under ideal conditions. Streaming is far lighter: YouTube video at 1080p is listed at roughly 3 to 8 Mbit/s with H.264, and 2160p at 8 to 35 Mbit/s. Real throughput is lower than the line rate because of protocol overhead.
1 megabit per second = 1,000,000 bits per second (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Bit rate (Ethernet, Wi-Fi and streaming rates); NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Megabit
Gibibyte Per Second (GiB/s)
1,073,741,824 bytes per second.
Gibibytes per second belong to the top of the speed range, where memory and fast storage move data in bulk. One gibibyte per second is 1,073,741,824 bytes per second. Multiplying by 8 gives 8,589,934,592 bits per second, so it is about 8.59 decimal gigabits per second and roughly 7.4 percent more than a decimal gigabyte per second.
The gi in the name stands for gigabinary, one of the contractions proposed in 1995 by an IUPAC committee. The IEC approved the finished prefixes in December 1998 as a way to separate binary multiples from SI ones. Later editions added further prefixes, and ISO/IEC 80000-13 now carries the binary prefix definitions. A gibibyte rate is easy to confuse with a gigabit rate, because the two differ by a factor of about 8.6, so conversions between them need care.
1 gibibyte per second = 8,589,934,592 bits per second (exactly).
Sources: NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; Wikipedia: Data-rate units
Related conversions
- GiB/s to Mbps (reverse)
- Mbps to bps
- Mbps to Kbps
- Mbps to Gbps
- Mbps to MB/s
- Mbps to Tbps
- Mbps to B/s
- Mbps to KB/s
- Mbps to GB/s
- Mbps to MiB/s
- Mbps to Kibit/s
- Mbps to Mibit/s
- Mbps to Gibit/s
- Bps to GiB/s
- Kbps to GiB/s
- Gbps to GiB/s
- MB/s to GiB/s
See all data transfer rate units.