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The speed of Internet service is
measured in bps, which stands for "bits per second" (a
bit is the smallest piece of digital information). But
when measuring how big a file is, personal computers, like
Macs and PCs, almost always use the terms byte,
kilobyte, megabyte, etc. An MP3 file for example,
is usually 3 to 4 megabytes in size.
When you see connection speeds
advertised in terms of kilobits, like 56Kbps, divide by eight
in order to find out how many kilobytes you can transfer per
second.
For example, if a connection is said
to transfer data at 56Kbps, that means you can
theoretically transfer 7 kilobytes per second. At this
rate, your 3-megabyte MP3 file would take 375 seconds or 6.25
minutes to download.
"Theoretically," because no matter
how fast your connection is, it's affected by the speed
of the Web sites or other servers you are connecting to, and
whether there's heavy Internet traffic at the moment.
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