The Difference Between Download Speed & Transfer Rate
Download speed refers to how fast a file can be copied from a remote computer, while transfer rate is the speed at which data is transferred between two devices, such as a hard drive and computer's memory.
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Download Speed
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Download speed depends on the speed of both your and the other computer's Internet connection. For Web pages, it also depends on how they are written. Web programmers can use various techniques to make their pages download faster.
Data Transfer Rate
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DTR refers to the speed of transfer between any two devices; for example, a computer and a printer, or a CD-ROM drive and a hard drive. It depends on the technical characteristics of the devices and the way they are connected.
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Download and Transfer Measure Units
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Download rates are measured in megabits per second (Mbps) for broadband connections, or kilobits per second (Kbps) for dial-up, modem connections. Transfer rates are measured in bits per second (bps), or for devices such as DVD-drives in gigabytes per second (GB/sec).
Advertised vs. Real Rates
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Advertised speeds are rarely, if ever, possible to achieve. For downloading, they vary hugely depending on how far you live from your service provider and other factors. For transfer rates, especially those involving hard disks, they depend on how big a file is and where it is on the disk.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit downloading pictures from camera to laptop image by patrimonio designs from Fotolia.com
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Comments
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Jeremy Tiedtke
Oct 06, 2010
downloading is in bits Kbs or Mbs transfer rates are in bytes MBs, KBs 8 bits to 1 byte your computer works with bytes so if you down load and you have 10Meg (10Mbs) your computer will show a max of 1.3MBs or if you have 1Meg (1Mbs) you will see around 176KBs of down load its very misleading
