How many bytes is a "Packet" ?

[moonwalker]

I have recently bought an Ethernet Adapter and gotten hooked up to ther internet.

It says I am connected at 100 Mbps. So how much
exactly is this 100 Mbps ? It can not be that big as it sounds
to me. I mean, 100 MB is a pretty big number.
Can someone explain if it means something else?

Also, when I try to look at the network status, it tells the sent
and received data in "Packets" ? So how big is this "packet"
in bytes?


I hope I have asked my questions clearly. Thanks.

[confuted]

Packets can vary in size. It's just a "chunk" of data.

100 Mbps stands for 100 megabits per second. Divide by 8 to get megabytes

[moonwalker]

How do I find out how many bytes of data is being sent and received? Is there a windows tool ?

[confuted]

There's a tool on analogx.com (I believe it's called NetStat Live!) which can measure the total amount recieved and sent while it was running, as well as how fast current transfers are going. In theory, it's great, but in practice, I found that it was a bit innacurrate.

If you're just looking for the size of a download, it will tell you on the download dialog box (at least in Internet Explorer)

Why are you so concerned about how much data is being transfered?

Or, if you were just asking this...

8 bits in a byte
1024 (sometimes labeled as 1000) bytes in a kilobyte
1024 (sometimes labeled as 1000) kilobytes in a megabyte
1024 (sometimes labeled as 1000) megabytes in a gigabyte

So, to convert between kilobits and bytes...
kilobits*1024 = bits / 8 = bytes

[moonwalker]

I know the conversion between bits and bytes, etc

I just wanted to know how fast the data is actually being
transferred in terms of bytes or any other units as long
as they're not as arbitrary as "packets."

Thanks for the info. I'll check out that site

[Hammer]

If you have winXP, there's a networking tab on the task manager.... at least there is on the pro version I'm running, I guess it's there on the home one too?

[moonwalker]

I forgot to mention this, I am using Win 2000 professional

[confuted]

Hammer - It's there in the Home version as well, but it's pretty much useless. My connection to the router is at 100 Mbps, but my internet connection is only 256 Kbps. The graph/info in the Networking tab shows percentage of network utilization, which is out of 100 Mbps... so it's really pretty useless.

moonwalker - If you're looking at the download box in IE, the speed that it gives you is in kilobytes/sec or /min (it's listed). Most FTP programs have something similar, as well as other web browsers. I'm still not sure if you're trying to measure the speed of your downloads from the internet or just transfers within your network though.

[moonwalker]

I am just trying to monitor how many bytes per second
I am receiving/sending throughout the time I am
connected in general. Just to see what's going on.

The speedometer here doesn't do what I want it to do,
but it seemed interesting:
http://promos.mcafee.com/speedometer/
It said that my speed is 196.8 Mbps
but I am actually connected at 100 Mbps ... so it is pretty lame

[compiler]

Originally posted by moonwalker
It said that my speed is 196.8 Mbps
but I am actually connected at 100 Mbps ... so it is pretty lame [/B]

U must be kidding ;-)

Hope this helps,

MRTG

[mewzishen]

I can relate to Moonwalker's question, but my interest may be different.
I have recently upgraded from dial-up to broadband (perhaps the last person on the planet?) and where my old dial-up status box showed my traffic in megabytes and I was thus able to gauge my usage, the status box for B/B shows traffic in packets. So if my B/B plan limit is 4GB before my speed is reduced then how do I know when I am approaching my limit? In other words, converting packets into megabytes? Not really a problem since my monthly average on D/U was (I think) in the tens of megabytes so I will probably never get close to 4 gigabytes in a month but I'd still like to know. And my B/B plan is 256k, so if my indicated connection speed is 100Mbps then how does that relate to 256k per second? I mean what's the equation?

[SlyMaelstrom]

I hereby give mewzishen the "worst first post of the ever" award.

Bumping a seven year old thread? Really? And without reading any of the replies first, apparently.

As the first reply says, a packet is not a specific size of data. You can think of it entirely synonymous to its tangible meaning. It's just a small package of, in this case, computer data. So if we weight all physical things in grams, what kind of answer would you suspect if someone came and asked "How many grams is a packet?" The size of a packet is whatever size the client and network end of any given application has decided to communicate in. Naturally there is a minimum and maximum size to this, but neither would assist you in converting packets to bytes. It simply is not meant to be done.