Data Transfer Glossary
Quick definitions for the units, protocols and performance terms used across DataTransferLab.
Mbps
Megabits per second. A common unit for internet and network link speed. 8 Mbps equals a theoretical 1 MB/s.
Related calculator or guide →MB/s
Megabytes per second. Commonly used for file and storage transfer rates. 1 MB/s equals 8 Mbps.
Related calculator or guide →Gbps
Gigabits per second. 1 Gbps equals 1,000 Mbps and has a theoretical file rate of 125 MB/s.
Related calculator or guide →GB
Gigabyte, a decimal storage unit equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes.
Related calculator or guide →GiB
Gibibyte, a binary storage unit equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes.
Related calculator or guide →TB
Terabyte, a decimal storage unit equal to 1,000 GB or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.
Related calculator or guide →TiB
Tebibyte, a binary storage unit equal to 1,024 GiB or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.
Related calculator or guide →Bandwidth
The capacity available on a network path, usually expressed in bits per second. It is a ceiling, not a guarantee of file-transfer speed.
Related calculator or guide →Throughput
The amount of useful data actually transferred per unit of time. Throughput is normally lower than theoretical link capacity.
Related calculator or guide →Latency
The delay between sending data and receiving a response. High latency can reduce performance for protocols and workloads that depend on frequent acknowledgements.
Related calculator or guide →Protocol overhead
Bandwidth consumed by headers, acknowledgements, encryption and other protocol work instead of file payload.
Related calculator or guide →TCP
Transmission Control Protocol. A reliable transport protocol that uses sequencing, acknowledgements and retransmission to deliver data.
Related calculator or guide →SMB
Server Message Block, a network file-sharing protocol commonly used for shared folders and NAS access.
Related calculator or guide →NAS
Network Attached Storage: storage exposed over a network, commonly through protocols such as SMB or NFS.
Related calculator or guide →RAID
A way of combining multiple drives for performance, capacity, redundancy, or a mix of those goals. Results depend on RAID level and implementation.
Related calculator or guide →IOPS
Input/output operations per second. Useful for storage workloads dominated by many small operations rather than large sequential transfers.
Related calculator or guide →Packet loss
Network packets that fail to reach their destination. Reliable protocols may retransmit them, reducing useful throughput.
Related calculator or guide →Bottleneck
The slowest limiting stage in an end-to-end transfer path, such as source storage, network, or destination storage.
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