When it comes to service speed, it's normally expressed in bits per seconds, such as kilobits per second or megabits per second. Bits per second is a decimal measure, meaning that 1000 kilobits per second is one megabit per second. These speeds are abbreviated as bps, Kbps, Mbps, and even Gbps (gigabits per second).
Sometimes you'll see speed expressed in bytes per second, such as kilobyes per second or megabytes per second, with these being shown as KBps and MBps. Note the difference in the second letter. Small b means bits, whereas large B means bytes.
When comparing the two, bytes per second is a larger measure than bits per second, and one byte per second is equal to eight bits per second. So, 1MBps equals 8Mbps, and conversely, 1Mbps equals 0.125MBps, or 1/8th of a MBps.
It's a little confusing, but nearly all speed tests show speeds in bits per second, and nearly all ISPs advertise in bits per second, such as HughesNet with 25Mbps.
As an example, this is a testmy.net speed test result from a couple of nights ago. It's showing 36.7 megabits per second (in blue), with the megabytes per second shown in parentheses to the right (4.6MBps).
With regard to HughesNet when you hit your data cap, the speeds are normally reduced to no higher than around 3Mbps. They're "typically 1Mbps - 3Mbps", though, depending on system congestion, as in how many people are using the system at any given time, it can be lower than that. As well, system congestion can affect streaming even when your overall speeds should be adequate.
When you have reached your data cap and your speeds are throttled, you can try reducing the Netflix definition to Standard or even Low definition to see if it helps.
Hope this helps. 🙂
reluttr,
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You can buy recording credits that never expire for as little as 20 cents. Depends on how many you buy. Right now they're running a sale of 50 credits (that do not expire) for $10. I find this option much better than the storage plan. I download recordings promptly so 7 days storage is fine for me .
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