Learn Data Units, Properly
Every number about internet speed or storage hides a unit decision — bits or bytes, decimal or binary, capacity or rate — and most confusion online traces back to exactly those decisions. These guides untangle them one at a time, in plain English, with the math shown and every definition checked against NIST and IEC standards per our methodology. Where a calculator answers "how much?", these pages answer the more useful question: "wait — why?"
Start With the Question You Are Trying to Answer
A speed test and a download window show different numbers: begin with Mbps vs MBps. It explains the lowercase-b/capital-B distinction and the exact 8-to-1 conversion between network speed and file-transfer rate.
A drive appears smaller after you connect it: read GB vs GiB. It separates decimal capacity from binary reporting and shows why a 1 TB drive becomes about 931 GiB without losing data.
A router or firewall lists PPS or Mpps: use What Is a Good PPS?. It explains why packet size changes line rate dramatically, how to measure a baseline, and how much headroom to keep.
Network Performance
What Is a Good PPS? Real Numbers for Every Network
Packet rates span six orders of magnitude — from an idle home's ~50 PPS to a 10G port's 14.88 million. The log-scale ruler, line-rate tables, the 18× small-packet problem, and how to find your own baseline.
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Units & Notation
GB vs GiB: Why Your Drive Looks Smaller Than the Box Says
Your 1 TB drive shows 931 GB and nothing is missing — GB counts in 1,000s, GiB in 1,024s. The full story with the drive label decoder, the OS behavior table, and the 1998 history.
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Units & Notation
Mbps vs MBps: The One-Letter Difference That Changes Everything
Why a lowercase b and an uppercase B are 8× apart, why your 100 Mbps plan downloads at 12.5 MBps, and how to never confuse them again — with a live converter and the full cheat table.
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Coming next in this section
Bit vs byte fundamentals · bandwidth vs throughput vs latency · what bitrate really means. Each guide publishes with the same standard: sourced definitions, worked math, and a live tool where it helps. Meanwhile, the converters and calculators cover the "how much" side.