Quote:
Originally posted by Xugumad
I may very well be wrong on this, but 1500Mbps/384Kbps down/up refers to 'Mega bits' and 'Kilo bits', not 'bytes'. Double-capitalization on the acronyms MB and KB indicates bytes, whereas single-capitalization such as Mb and Kb indicates bits. Naturally, bits are never mentioned in any advertising anywhere, and most laypeople casually use terms such as Megabytes and Kilobytes when they are in fact getting bits.
Not that it'd matter, but they are exaggerating by a factor of 8. On Verizon's DSL ad pages, they advertise how you are given 10MB of web space, and up to 1.5 Mbps/128 Kbps (or 384 in your case) of DSL throughput. Note the capitalization. Thus, you are in fact only getting 188Kilobytes/48Kilobytes. (you referred to 384kilobytes in your post)
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I agree with your math and you're right that this is potentially misleading to the inexperienced reader, but in Verizon's defense, this seems to be the standard way of specifying bandwidth. (We say "gigabit ethernet", not "gigabyte".) At work we have a 256K frame relay (working on a full T1!), which is bits, in bytes it's 32K, and indeed I get from 26 to 30 for downloads under good circumstances (bear in mind that this is shared for the whole office). Modems are speced in bits too, so when I get a 48000 Kb connection with my 56K modem, that translates to a theoretical top of 6Kbytes, and I get 5 or 5.5 when the stars align properly.
So while the 768K DSL that I signed up for is "only" 98 Kbytes, it's still a heckuva lot faster than the 56K modem. We'll see what I end up getting for real when they turn it on.