What Is Data Transfer Rate?

Date First Published: 21st April 2022

Topic: Computer Networking

Subtopic: Data Transmission Technologies

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 5/10

Learn more about what data transfer rate is in this article.

Data transfer rate is a measure of the speed that a network device can send data. It specifies the amount of data that can be transferred from one place to another per second. For example, Cat 5 Ethernet cables are capable of providing a data transfer rate of up to 100 Mb/s. Data transfer rate is measured in bits, kilobits, megabits, and gigabits per second.

Note:

The measurements of data transfer rate are often confused with the measurement of storage capacity (bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes), but they are not the same. A byte is eight times bigger than a bit. For example, if an ISP provided a data transfer rate of 50 Mb/s, it would only be capable of transferring 6.25 megabytes per second as 50 ÷ 8 is 6.25.

How To Calculate Data Transfer Rate?

Data transfer rate can be calculated using the formula:

Data transfer rate = Amount of data ÷ number of seconds.

For example, 7 MB of data was transferred and it took 1.5 seconds for that data to be transferred.

7 ÷ 1.5 = 4.67 (rounded to 2 decimal places)

In order to get that in megabits, it needs to be multiplied by 8.

4.67 x 8 = 37.36 Mb/s

Is Data Transfer Rate The Same As Bandwidth?

Data transfer rate is not to be confused with bandwidth. Bandwidth is a measure of the number of bits that can be sent or received per second (transmission capacity) and data transfer rate is a measure of how fast data is transferred from one point to another. Higher bandwidth will result in a higher data transfer rate.

What Has An Effect On Data Transfer Rate?

The factors that have an effect on data transfer rate are:

• Network congestion .
• The available bandwidth on a home or business network.
• The number of users connected to the network. More users will slow the network down, causing the data transfer rate to be dropped.
• The network and upload speed of an internet connection.
• The network technology. For example, Ethernet cables have a limit on the amount of data they can transfer at a time.
• The maximum speed supported by a wireless router or network adapter.

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