How Much is a Kilobyte?

How much is a Kilobyte?

Ok, B = byte, b = bit - but what do the prefixes K, M, G, T mean?
The answer is - it depends. Sometimes it means a power of 10, sometimes it is a power of 2.
Worksheets #1 and #3 show them as powers of 10; the Worksheet #2 shows them as powers
of 2. Both are considered correct depending on the context.
In your work career, you will see both. The terms K, as well as M, G and T, depends on the
context where and who is using it.
So how do you know when to use which?
The answer is not easy, and it has been a battle and confusing for a long time.
Many students assume the prefix Kilo = 1000, Mega = 1,000,000, Giga = 1,000,000,000 and
Tera =1,000,000,000,000.
But there are at least 4 different definitions on what K, M, G, T means.
The International System of Units (SI) is on the metric system in base 10. So, Kilo is 10^3,
Mega is 10^6, Giga is 10^9, etc. This is what is used in telecommunications and in
networking. Thus, 5 Mbps is 5 million bits traversed in 1 second. Ditto on 10 Gbps – it
means 10 billion bits per second. This is fairly standard and accepted in industry and
academics.
But computers work on base 2. So, for computer science folks and in certain computer uses,
Kilo is 2^10, mega is 2^20, giga is 2^30, tera is 2^40, etc. So, a KB = 1024 bytes, not 1000
bytes. A Megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes or 1024 KB, Gigabyte is 1024 MB, Terabyte is 1024
GB. This standard is defined by the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC), the
global leader in developing open standards for the microelectronics industry. This standard
has been around since the late 1950s.
JEDEC is the standard used for computer OSes, DRAM, etc. This is what Windows and
Ubuntu Linux use when you check sizes on your files and your disk. When your computer
comes with 16 GB, it has 16 times 1024^3 bytes. (Note there are exceptions - Apple is
different, Apple IOS uses the SI standard. Also a few Linux distribution systems use the SI
standard.)
Is this important? Yes, while the difference between 1000 and 1024 is only 24, it becomes a
much bigger factor when the exponents get large, as in GB or TB.
In this class, we will try to explicitly state what to use for file sizes (SI or JEDEC) if the
context is not clear. By default, use JEDEC for file sizes and SI for network bandwidth.
Note that in Week 3, you will be using a traffic generator called iperf in your Mininet lab. By
default, iperf uses the JEDEC standard for file sizes. (You can change this behavior by adding
a flag on the iperf command line; see the references for details.)
 How Much is a Kilobyte?

Read on if you would like to know a little more about the subject.
Hard disk manufacturers use SI standard. This explains the difference you may have noticed
when you buy a hard drive that says, just for example, 500 GB and after installing it, instead
of 500 GB, you find in File Manager only 465.66 GB. Were you shorted disk space? No, the
difference is in the decimal definition of Gigabyte that the disk manufacturer is using versus
the binary definition that the computer uses.
One more definition to really confuse you – there are also definitions with mixed binary and
decimal! A base 2 megabyte = 1024^2 = 1,048,576 bytes. But there is also the definition of 1
MB = 1,024,000 bytes. Huh? How do we get that? It’s 1000 x 1024! This definition used to
describe the formatted capacity of the 1.44 MB 3.5-inch floppy disk drive (old school!!!)
which actually has a capacity of 1,474,560 bytes.
In 1998, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) approved a new set of prefixes
for binary definitions with Kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, pebi to differentiate these from the SI
standard. Note the bi is for binary. Also note that the capital K is consistent with the IEEE
convention. In 2009, this standard has also been adopted by the IEEE, ISO, NIST and the EU.
However, these terms have not been widely used in the media or in industry. Have any of
you heard of mebibyte or Kibibyte or pebibyte?
One more definition to really confuse you – there are also definitions with mixed binary and
decimal! A base 2 megabyte = 1024^2 = 1,048,576 bytes. But there is also the definition of 1
MB = 1,024,000 bytes. Huh? How do we get that? It’s 1000 x 1024! This definition used to
describe the formatted capacity of the 1.44 MB 3.5-inch floppy disk drive (old school!!!)
which actually has a capacity of 1,474,560 bytes.
Confusing and inconsistent use of Suffixes.

Michael Yee and Harold Millan

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References:
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte