• SpeakinTelnet@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years ago

    Every popular speedtest is in bytes, every download will show the size in bytes, even streaming services often show bitrates in bytes. Size on the internet is bytes-centric.

    An ISP selling their plan as gigabit has nothing to do with network engineers, it’s only an easy way to inflate their numbers.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      2 years ago

      Nonsense. It’s a simple continuation of something that has always been around. They would have needed to actively and purposefully changed it. The first company that tried to sell “1 Megabyte/s” instead of “8 Megabits/s” is shooting themselves in the foot because the number is smaller. If it was going to change, you would need everyone to agree at once to correct the numbers the same way.

      Modems were 300 baud, then 1200 baud, then 56.6k baud. ISDN took things to 128k baud, and a T1 was 1.544M baud. Except that sometime around the time things went into tens of k, we started saying “bits” instead of “baud”. In any case, it simply continued with the first DSL and cable modems being around 1 to 10 Mbits. You had to be able to compare it fairly to what came before, and the easiest way to do that is to keep doing what they’ve been doing.

      Ethernet continues to be sold in the same system of measurement, for the same reasons.

      • SpeakinTelnet@sh.itjust.works
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        2 years ago

        The first company that tried to sell “1 Megabyte/s” instead of “8 Megabits/s” is shooting themselves in the foot because the number is smaller.

        You’re telling me that what I say is nonsense and you just paraphrase what I said.

        Don’t go thinking engineering has anything to do with what marketing put up on their storefront.

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          2 years ago

          It has plenty to do with engineering, because it was engineering that first decided to measure things this way. Marketing merely continued it.

          • SpeakinTelnet@sh.itjust.works
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            2 years ago

            Which, as you mentioned, they keep because if they didn’t it wouldn’t be a good marketing move, higher number sells more. Even though it doesn’t reflect the modern end user internet experience. They don’t keep it because an engineer prefer that. Marketing will fight tooth and nail to screw us engineers over if it sells better.