Talk:Megabit

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Discussion about centralization took place at Talk:Binary prefix.

Contents 1 More meaningful byte value conversion 2 Untrue statement 3 125 KB? 4 Removed some trivia 5 Megabit 6 See also 7 neutrality question

[edit] More meaningful byte value conversion

I just added a more meaningful byte value conversion, as that's something people would likely be looking for....

Someone's got a Mbit down as 10^6 (correct) = 1,048,... (whatever, but it's wrong) bits. The M in megabit is the decimal mega (10^6). Which does not - no matter your binary conventions, equal anything other than one million. Have removed this spurious figure.

Thanks. It's hard to maintain all these articles against vandalism. — Omegatron 03:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Untrue statement

The megabit is most commonly used when referring to data transfer rates in network speeds, e.g. a 100 Mbit/s Fast Ethernet connection. In this context, like elsewhere in telecommunications, it always equals 106 bits. Residential high speed internet is often measured in megabits. A binary counterpart of megabit, useful for measuring RAM and ROM chip capacity, is mebibit.

^^ The above is untrue in terms of telecommunications although without checking holds true for packet based networks.

With the developement of PCM a 4kHz voice was sampled at 8000 times per second and formed 8 bit words (7bit data plus parity). Hence 8000x8 = 64Kb/s (Should be 64Kib/s)

Further as defined by SDH/SONET standards the primary rate interface E1 (Europe) is 2.048Mb/s (2.048Mib/s) That is 32 x 64Kb/s channels are thus byte interleaved to form a 2.048Mb/s (2.048Mib/s). Thus the new terminology defined by the IEC 60027-2 Standard (or working group) is factually correct.

Storage medium for the most part (Hard Drives Predominantly) continue to use the metric conversion.

The use of k or K does not in itself imply binary nor metric hence the move to use IEC 60027-2 Standard for data transmission and solid state memory devices is an important step.

[edit] 125 KB?

are you sure it is not 122KB because 125 000 bits devided by 1024 is 122.0703125 and Kilobytes are 1024 based not 1000 based

I just made the change because you're right - KevinJones 20:33, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I just changed it to 122KB again... who keeps changing it? --Poh Tay Toez (talk) 03:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

The kilobyte is an ambiguous unit. It's pointless switching between 122 kilobytes and 125 kilobytes because both are correct. In fact even the megabit is ambiguous (some define it as 1024^2 bits), which makes for yet more options. Let's keep it as simple as possible without losing the essence. Thunderbird2 (talk) 10:39, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removed some trivia

I removed the following as non-encyclopedic:

It is certain that the SNES Street Fighter II cartridge's proud claim that it came on a 'massive 16-Mbit cartridge' sounds more impressive than stating that the whole game weighed in at 2 MB, i.e. about the same size as a desktop-sized bitmap image these days.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kaleja (talk • contribs) 22:47, 10 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Megabit

(Cross-posted from User talk:intgr)

Actually, SNES cartridge capacities are measured in mebibits, you are right, but the symbol of mebibit is Mibit, not Mbit like it's written in Megabit. Sarenne 21:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, I missed that. -- intgr 22:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

What do you suggest we do about it? Perhaps the cartridge example is bad for this article in the first place? -- intgr 22:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I simply suggest to replace "Mbit" by "Mibit", like in Mebibit but it will need explanation about the fact that 'megabits' are actually 'mebibits'. Perhaps this example is not relevant for this article, you're right :) Sarenne 22:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] See also

The following discussion took place on my Talk Page:

Hello! I'd like to invite you to take a look at WP:ALSO, a section in the Wikipedia Manual of Style which describes how "see also" sections are generally used. Since the purpose of these sections is to provide a place for relevant wikilinks that aren't yet included in the article, with the eventual intent being to integrate those links into the article and remove the "see also" section entirely once that's done, I've removed a number of redundant links from the articles megabit and gigabyte. If you wish to discuss these changes, I'd be happy to do so. --Dachannien^Talk_Contrib 11:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I have followed your suggestion to look at WP:ALSO. Though I have not read it thoroughly, the presence in it of a "See also" section suggests to me that its authors have not thought through the implications of their own guideline. In what sense does the removal of (eg) bit from the "See also" of megabit improve the megabit article? Thunderbird2 13:29, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. A person reading no more than the introduction to the article would have already come across the wikilinked term "bit" and could have clicked on it if they were interested. Including a wikilink in the "see also" section merely clutters that section up, making it more difficult for users to pick out the terms that are both (a) related to the topic at hand and (b) didn't already appear elsewhere in the article. If "see also" were intended to be a handy summary of all the wikilinks in an article, it would have been made an automatic function of MediaWiki long ago. Hope this makes sense. --Dachannien^Talk_Contrib 17:02, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

If "See also" were used as a "handy summary of all the wikilinks in an article", I would agree with you. In megabit it is not used in that way, but as a summary of most directly related to the megabit article (bit, megabyte, mebibit). Collecting the important ones in one place helps the reader by saying Reading these particular articles will help you understand the concept of a megabit. Thunderbird2 (talk) 10:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Not really. If a reader begins reading the article and comes across a concept or word he or she doesn't understand, then that word will already be wikilinked within the article, and they can click on it then. If it's unclear from the context of the article that a particular concept is important as background to understanding the topic at hand, then the article should be revised to make that context clearer. In other words, repeating the links at the end of the article isn't particularly useful, because someone unfamiliar with the concepts of a topic don't skip to the appendix material first - they read the article from the beginning. --Dachannien^Talk_Contrib 14:33, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

In the hope of achieving consensus, I'd like to know what other editors think. Please comment here. Thunderbird2 (talk) 14:43, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] neutrality question

This statement seems to imply mild contempt for standard industry usage: "The practice of using megabit or Mbit in this context is still widespread in the RAM and ROM manufacturing industry in 2007 #despite the availability of an unambiguous alternative#." The portion in hash marks seems based in opinion. To me, IMHO, the author of this statement is indicating the opinion that RAM/ROM manufacturer's should change their usage. Akamos (talk) 17:20, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the quoted statement is even true. When people refer to RAM and ROM it is usually in terms of bytes, not bits. If a source is found demonstrating its correctness (that the megabit is used in the binary sense), I consider it reasonable to point out that an unambiguous unit is available. Do you have a suggestion for rephrasing it in a more neutral way? Thunderbird2 (talk) 17:46, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

That passage arose due to binary prefix evangelism. I've pared it down to what's necessary to direct people to the mebibit article. --Dachannien^Talk_Contrib 18:15, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

It is true, though, that all the manufacturers I can think of, including Samsung, Toshiba, TI, Atmel, etc, all use the terms kilobit (Kbit/Kb), megabit (Mbit/Mb), and gigabit (Gbit/Gb) in the base-two sense of the word, when referring to discrete SRAM, DRAM, EEPROM, and Flash chips. They do *not* refer to these chips in terms of their "byte" storage capacity (I hypothesize here) because of the historical ambiguity of the very term "byte", which has had different meanings from 5 bits up to 9 bits or more through various historical generations of computer architectures. JEDEC standards support this view as well. I was the person who most recently expanded on the recently deleted section; when I wrote it I actually surprised myself with how fair and balanced I thought I was being. I am personally in favour of "unit purity" and would like nothing more than to see the day when the misuse of "megabit" and the likes are forgotten to history; however, that day has not yet come, and I thought it was important for people who are researching the issue be presented with factually accurate facts about the current state of affairs within the industry. Goosnarrggh (talk) 13:47, 7 April 2008 (UTC)