KBPS Full Form

What is the full form of Kbps?

Kbps stands for Kilobits per second. It is the unit used to measure the peripheral or network speed. It is easy to get confused between Kbps and KBps but both are not the same. Usually, the capital B is used for Bytes and small b for bits. One Byte contains 8 bits and each bit is a single numeral value, either “0” or “1”. Usually, data communication speed such as your wifi or network data speed is measured in kilobits per second (Kbps), while data transfer speed between devices, such as through a USB(Universal Serial Bus) connection is measured in Kilobytes per second (KBps). Though still highly used, kbps is slowly being replaced by higher speed units such as Mbps and Gbps with the recent advancements in networking technologies that are making a higher speed of wireless and wired communications and data transfer possible.

This Story also Contains

1. What is the full form of Kbps?
2. What Is Kbps?
3. Difference Between Kbps And KBps
4. Generally Used Decimal Multiples Of Kbps

What Is Kbps?

Kbps is an acronym for kilobits per second. It is a unit used to measure data transfer speed. One Kbps means a data transfer of 1,000 bits per second.

For example, a person with a 1,000 Kbps connection will be able to transfer 1000,000 bits in one second i.e. his connection speed will be 1 Mbps or 1 Megabit per second.

A bit is the smallest unit of information in a digital system that can hold a single numeral value of either "1" or "0". Having a connection speed of even 1 Mbps means that your connected devices can communicate (send or receive) one million 1s or 0s every second.

Difference Between Kbps And KBps

1. While the small letter b in Kbps stands for bits, the capital letter B in KBps stands for Bytes.

2. Generally, Kbps is used for data communication speed, while KBps is used for data file transfer speed.

3. while 1 kilobits = 1000 bits, 1 KiloByte = 1024 bytes. This is because unlike the traditional definition of a kilo which is 10^3 units, the digital systems use a binary base and define a kilo as 2^10 = 1024 units.

4. A real-life example to understand the difference between Kbps and KBps is the internet connection speed and the download speed. Your internet speed may be 8 Kbps but you might observe that you get a download speed of approx 1KBps. It doesn’t mean the internet provider is cheating on you.

This is because 1 Byte is equal to 8 bits and while your device may be communicating with the internet at a speed of 8 kilobits per second, the device will store the received data in terms of Bytes, KiloBytes, or MegaBytes and hence show the download speed as only 1 KBps(approx).

Converting Kbps to KBps

To convert Kbps to KBps precisely, follow the following steps:

• Multiply kbps by 1000 to get the speed in bits
• Divide the bit speed by 8 to get the speed in bytes
• Divide the byte speed by 1024 to get speed in KBps
• Alternatively, use the formula (kbps×1000)/(8×1024) = KBps
• Or kbps × 0.1220703125 = KBps

Understanding Internet Service Provider Plans

Many times there is confusion caused by the similarity of KBps/MBps and Kbps/Mbps when it comes to understanding what the ISP promised and what we are getting.

Sometimes people complain that their ISP promised 8mbps connectivity but they are unable to get the speed 8MBps whole downloading or uploading any files.

What we need to keep in mind is that data transfer speeds are always calculated in terms of kilobits per second but file size unit is always in Kilo Bytes and thus download speeds are always calculated based on how many Bytes are downloaded per second hence KBps.

This is why even on a connection with 8Mbps speed you might be getting only about 1Mbps download speed.

Generally Used Decimal Multiples Of Kbps

Megabit per second ("Mbps") is equal to:

• 1,000 kilobits per second

Gigabit per second ("Gbps") is equal to:

• 1,000,000 kilobits per second

Terabit per second ("Tbps") is equal to:

• 1,000,000,000 kilobits per second