Bit time

Bit time is a quantity that can be useful for simplifying the calculation of file download times and network latency. Bit time for a given link is simply the time taken to transmit one bit. Some bit times for commonly encountered link capacities are given in the table below:

Link technology	Bandwidth	Bit Time
telephone modem	56 kbit/s	17.86 μs = 17,857 ns
2 Mbit ADSL broadband	2 Mbit/s	0.5 μs = 500 ns
5 Mbit HFC broadband	5 Mbit/s	0.2 μs = 200 ns
WiFi	54 Mbit/s	0.0185 μs = 18.5 ns
Ethernet	100 Mbit/s	0.01 μs = 10 ns
Gigabit Ethernet	1 Gbit/s	0.001 μs = 1 ns

Once you have bit times, you can perform all calculations in terms of the packet size in bits and convert to time only if required.

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