Gigabit vs Gigabyte

[TrainFan475]

Can someone give me an answer as to what the differences between a Gigabyte and a Gigabit are? People always say gigabit when they're talking about transfer speeds and gigabyte when they're talking about data storage

[WereCatf]

2 minutes ago, Traincraft101 said:

Can someone give me an answer as to what the differences between a Gigabyte and a Gigabit are? People always say gigabit when they're talking about transfer speeds, and gigabyte when they're talking about data storage! Is it incorrect to say "I have a gigabyte internet connection" and "This is a 32 gigabit flash drive"? This also applies to megabits/bytes, kilobits/bytes, etc. I'm sorry If I sound dumb, but This is really confusing to me!

One byte is 8 bits, so 1 gigabyte is 8 gigabit and so on.

[Lurick]

Yes it's incorrect to say you have a gigabyte connection unless you have a connection that can do 8Gb/s

Data is transferred in bits, 1's and 0's however, the smallest amount of data that can be stored is 1 byte (8 1's and 0's).

Note that the difference in bits vs bytes is denoted by the capitalization or lack thereof for the 'b'.

'b' - bits

'B' - bytes

[TrainFan475]

So if you had an 8 gigabit internet connection, it would take 1 second to download a gigabyte? (in theory)

[SupaKomputa]

Damn everyone beating me by a second... lol..

[FlamesFans13]

1 minute ago, Traincraft101 said:

So if you had an 8 gigabit internet connection, it would take 1 second to download a gigabyte? (in theory)

In theory, Yes.

[Lurick]

Just now, Traincraft101 said:

So if you had an 8 gigabit internet connection, it would take 1 second to download a gigabyte?

Assuming no bottlenecks with storage or anything else and you could fully saturate the entire connection and there was no ramp up time and it was transferred at the max speed from the start, yes

[TrainFan475]

⠀

[minibois]

1 Gigabyte = 8 Gigabit.

Taking it a bit preciser, 1 byte = 8 bits, a bit being a 1 or a 0 (on or off), giga being billion, so you have billions of 1's and 0's which translate out to a .gif of a cat for example.

 

Technically you're not wrong when you saying you have an internet connection of 1 GB per second (assuming you have that speed) or have a harddrive of 8Gbit. But those are not really the way you're 'suppose' to use the measurements. You don't say you're 0.0018KM tall, you say you're 1,8M tall.

 

The reason why one is used over another.. Is not totally clear to me. I would like to say your ISP uses Mbit because they can use a higher number (and the general population doesn't know MB vs. Mb, they only see "this service has 8MB, this one has 12Mb, so the latter is faster", while it's actually much slower).

I can see why harddrives are shown in GB though, as your file are measured not in bits, but bytes. Because the system reads it as whole bytes, not individual bits (it's not use seeing half of a file, you want to see the whole file).

I can see network equipment use Gb because there are additional pieces of information attached to your 'information packet' with extra info.

 

For example, TCP (one of the most used ways of packet communication) has extra pieces of info added onto a packet to give it 'more meaning'.

Some of these pieces of info are not 8 bits, or not even evenly divisible by 8 (like a piece of 4 bits with info). It would be kind of unfair to look at it in bytes.

[Senzelian]

 

 

 

11 minutes ago, Lurick said:

the smallest amount of data that can be stored is 1 byte (8 1's and 0's).

I can successfully write, store and read a bit.

Am I a god?

[Lurick]

9 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

I can successfully write, store and read a bit.

Am I a god?

On a modern computing system and storage, prove that you can store a single 1 or 0 with no leading or trailing bits

[Senzelian]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

On a modern computing system and storage, prove that you can store a single 1 or 0 with no leading or trailing bits

You didn't mention the "modern computing system" before.  

[Lurick]

Just now, Senzelian said:

You didn't mention the "modern computing system" before.  

Haha, ok, you got me there

[Senzelian]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Haha, ok, you got me there

Technically would be possibly tho. But I wouldn't be able to do it on modern storage.

 

Edit: Oh wait, no I can actually do it. DNA is modern storage right? Cause I can remember the state of a switch with my brainzzz. Does that count?  

[Lurick]

2 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Technically would be possibly tho. But I wouldn't be able to do it on modern storage.

 

Edit: Oh wait, no I can actually do it. DNA is modern storage right? Cause I can remember the state of a switch with my brainzzz. Does that count?  

Haha, I'll let it count

If you think of a 1 or 0 does that count?

[Senzelian]

Just now, Lurick said:

Haha, I'll let it count

If you think of a 1 or 0 does that count?

Yeah probably. 
So all I need to do is to swallow an i7, and I would become a modern computing system with modern storage that can store single bits. 

[Leanora]

It's just the unit you measure in.  Mbit vs MB  Gb vs GB

Megabit, MegaByte Gigabit GigaByte

 

as previously said, the difference between bit and byte is 8

b = bit

B= Byte

 

8 bit = 1 byte

1024 Kilobyte= 1 Megabyte

1024 MB = 1GB

1014GB = 1 TB ( terabyte )

 

Do note that when you ask the sales guys then 1000MB = 1 GB, not 1024MB. 

 

One is typically used to measure storage, the other speeds. 
Having said that I find it really annoying when people measure things in bits, I need to convert  it to Bytes every bloody time. 

 

It's just that it looks bigger.  well 240Mbit/s is still 30MB/s so just say 30MB/s will ya

Saying that your Epeen is 60mm doesn't make it any bigger than those 6CM either.

 

 

Edit:

So saying that you have a 500GB HDD is actually not true since the actual size is not 500GB but  ~465.66 GB, this is why you can never trust sales people

[NineEyeRon]

I only count in petabits

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 hours ago, Leanora said:

Edit:

So saying that you have a 500GB HDD is actually not true since the actual size is not 500GB but  ~465.66 GB, this is why you can never trust sales people

This depends entirely on the OS now. macOS and some distributions of Linux report using SI scaling, so a 500GB storage drive really shows up as a 500GB storage drive.

[Zodiark1593]

If I have a 128 GB flash drive and throw it through the hallway and it reaches the living room in one second, does this mean my house can shift data around at a Terabit per second?

[The King of the Undead]

2 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

If I have a 128 GB flash drive and throw it through the hallway and it reaches the living room in one second, does this mean my house can shift data around at a Terabit per second?

not your house but apariently you can.

[akio123008]

Kilo = 1000 according to international standards, therefore a KB is actually 1000 bytes (which each consist of 8 bits). 1024 bytes would officially be called 1 KiB or 1 kibibyte. Most people however, and also the windows operating system, use the KB to describe 1024 bytes anyway. 

 

So officially:

1 byte = 8 bits

1 kilobyte (KB) = 1000 bytes = 8000 bits = 8 Kilobits (Kb)

1 kibibyte (KiB) = 1024 bytes = 8192 bits = 8 kibibits (Kibit)

 

[Zodiark1593]

10 minutes ago, will4623 said:

not your house but apariently you can.

Once I heard the phrase "Do not underestimate the bandwidth of a stationwagon full of drives hurtling down the highway." Perhaps LTT can put that to the test and build a NAS or server into a car, because science entertainment!

[harryk]

The reason we use bits for transmission and byte for storage has to do with the historical development of technology and associated conventions.

 

When dealing with analog electronics, data transfer rate is typically measure in baud. Those who've used dial-up may remember baud rate, or if you've played with micro controllers you may have encountered it. A baud rate is measured in symbols per second. When digital electronics became prevalent they adopted the existing infrastructure of analog communication. With digital those symbols are either 0 or 1. Hence we can measure the transfer speed in bits per second.

 

We measure storage in bytes because in many computers a byte is the smallest chunk of useful data. That is to say on a single cpu cycle it takes in an 8 bit chunk of data and outputs an 8 bit chunk of data. This is where the term 8-bit computer comes from. Thus when measuring storage capacity it's more useful to know how many bytes it can hold because that is analogous to how many instructions or numbers it can hold.

[The King of the Undead]

1 minute ago, harryk said:

The reason we use bits for transmission and byte for storage has to do with the historical development of technology and associated conventions.

 

When dealing with analog electronics, data transfer rate is typically measure in baud. Those who've used dial-up may remember baud rate, or if you've played with micro controllers you may have encountered it. A baud rate is measured in symbols per second. When digital electronics became prevalent they adopted the existing infrastructure of analog communication. With digital those symbols are either 0 or 1. Hence we can measure the transfer speed in bits per second.

 

We measure storage in bytes because in many computers a byte is the smallest chunk of useful data. That is to say on a single cpu cycle it takes in an 8 bit chunk of data and outputs an 8 bit chunk of data. This is where the term 8-bit computer comes from. Thus when measuring storage capacity it's more useful to know how many bytes it can hold because that is analogous to how many instructions or numbers it can hold.

Cool!