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Mbps to MB/s, and download time

Speed is measured in megabits per second, files in megabytes, and a byte holds eight bits: divide megabits by eight to get MB/s. A 100 Mbps line gives about 12.5 MB/s, so a 5 GB film lands in roughly seven minutes.

Enter a speed and a file size — you get both the conversion and the download time.

12,5MB/s
7 minfor the file

Ready-made numbers

SpeedMB/s5 GB film80 GB game

The times in the table are the ceiling of the line. In practice it runs 10–20% longer: protocol headers eat a share of the speed, and the rest depends on the server you are downloading from.

FAQ

guest@404vpn:~$ cat speed-faq.md
[01] $ Why is speed in megabits but files in megabytes? ▸
> History. Networks have always counted bits per second, file systems bytes. Bits also suit providers in their advertising: the number comes out eight times larger. A byte is eight bits, so 100 Mbps is 12.5 MB/s.
[02] $ Why is the real download slower than the number here? ▸
> The figure is the ceiling of your line. In practice protocol headers eat a share, and the rest depends on the source server, the latency and how busy the network is. Getting 80–90% of the theoretical value is normal; from a slow server it can be far less, whatever your provider promised.
[03] $ Are MB and MiB the same thing? ▸
> No. A megabyte in the decimal system is a million bytes; a mebibyte (MiB) is 1,048,576 bytes — about 5% apart. Providers and drive makers count in decimal, Windows shows binary, which is where the “missing” gigabytes on a new disk come from. Everything here is decimal.
[04] $ How much do video and calls need? ▸
> HD video is fine on 5 Mbps, 4K needs about 25. A video call needs 2–4 Mbps, and there the steadiness of the latency matters more than the speed: above 150 ms of ping the conversation starts breaking up even on a fast line.