Tililt

Download Time Calculator

How long a transfer takes, and the units people keep confusing.

How it works

The confusion is always bits versus bytes. Connections are sold in megabits per second; files are measured in megabytes. There are eight bits in a byte, so a 100 Mbps line moves at most 12.5 MB/s — and the "at most" matters, because TCP, IP and Ethernet headers consume several per cent before any of your data moves.

The second trap is that a "GB" from a drive manufacturer is 1,000,000,000 bytes while a "GB" in your operating system is 1,073,741,824. Both units are offered above.

Common questions

Why is my download slower than my connection speed?

Protocol overhead takes 5-10%, the server may cap per-connection throughput, and the bottleneck is often somewhere other than your own line.

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