Mbits

Mbits is the plural form of megabit, a unit of information equal to one million bits. It is commonly used to describe data quantities and data transfer rates. In formal notation, megabit is abbreviated as Mb or Mbit when referring to a single unit, and Mbps or Mbit/s is used for rate. The term Mbits can appear in informal writing as shorthand for multiple megabits, but precise usage typically relies on the singular Mb or Mbit for a single unit and Mbps or Mbit/s for per-second rates.

In data transfer, megabits per second measure throughput—the amount of data that can be transmitted each second. A speed of 1 Mbit/s implies 1,000,000 bits are transmitted every second (in decimal terms). It is important to distinguish megabits from mebibits: a mebibit (Mibit) equals 1,048,576 bits, not 1,000,000, and is abbreviated Mibit. Likewise, data sizes expressed in megabits differ from those expressed in megabytes (MB); 1 byte equals 8 bits, so 1 Mbit/s equals 0.125 MB/s.

Typical usage places Mbits in networking and telecommunications, where internet connections and network links are described in Mbps. In storage or file transfer, data rates are often given in megabytes per second (MB/s) or mebibytes per second (MiB/s), with a conversion factor of 8 between bits and bytes. Examples range from consumer broadband in tens to hundreds of Mbps, to modern fiber and Ethernet links at Gbps scales, where speeds are commonly stated in Gbps or Mbps. See also megabit, mebibit, megabyte per second, bandwidth.