Bug 150327 - Speed units should be bits/s, not bytes/s (currently KB/s)
Summary: Speed units should be bits/s, not bytes/s (currently KB/s)
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Alias: None
Product: ktorrent
Classification: Applications
Component: general (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: unspecified
Platform: Fedora RPMs Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Joris Guisson
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2007-09-29 16:14 UTC by Juha Tuomala
Modified: 2007-10-29 15:28 UTC (History)
0 users

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Description Juha Tuomala 2007-09-29 16:14:48 UTC
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.5.7)
Installed from:    Fedora RPMs

Speed units should be bits/s, not bytes/s 
 
In telecommunication engineering, information transfer rates are indicated using bit/s (kbit/s) units, not bytes/s (kB/s). Byte is information storage unit. 
 
That is the reason why every network interface (host interfaces, switches, routers, ADSL terminals, mobile terminals) show the units in bit/s prefixed with some SI multiplier. That's why your harddrive says giga *bytes*. 
 
Bytes are fine for amount of transferred information or actual storage. Currently comparing your known connection speeds to shown display, it's confusing and inaccurate if you do rough scaling in head (byte == 8bits, /10 --> 20% error). 
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kbit/s 
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte
Comment 1 Joris Guisson 2007-09-29 17:10:15 UTC
Pretty much every program lists data transfer rates in KB/s, MB/s or GB/s (should you ever get to that speed). All browsers do this, the major bittorrent clients do this, why should KT be different ? This seems something which would confuse normal users. 

Comment 2 Juha Tuomala 2007-09-29 18:38:59 UTC
If some hobbyist screwed it in the first place and then others followed, doesn't mean that KT should do so too. Bytes/s are very rarely seen in professional context and for good reason - to avoid confusion and 
make figures comparable.

> This seems something which would confuse normal users. 

Exactly, messing up your ADSL Mbit/s and KT KB/s is confusing. 
Normal user doesn't even understand the difference of bit and 
byte.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate#Usage_notes
> The formal abbreviation for "bit per second" is "bit/s" (not "bits/s").
> In less formal contexts the abbreviations "b/s" or "bps" are often used,
> though this risks confusion with "bytes per second" ("B/s", "Bps").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_network_throughput#Nomenclature
> The throughput of communications links is measured in bits per second
> (bit/s), kilobits per second (kbit/s), megabits per second (Mbit/s) 
> and Gigabits per second (Gbit/s). In this application, kilo, mega 
> and giga are the standard S.I. prefixes indicating multiplication 
> by 1,000 (kilo), 1,000,000 (mega), and 1,000,000,000 (giga).
> File sizes are typically measured in bytes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_network_throughput#Confusing_and_inconsistent_use_of_prefixes
> This may not be obvious to those unfamiliar with telecommunications 
> and computing, so misunderstandings sometimes arise. In actuality, 
> a 64 kilobyte file is 64 × 1,024 × 8 bits in size.

Nuff said?

Make it configurable if not willing to agree.

Comment 3 Maciej Pilichowski 2007-09-29 21:13:51 UTC
Come on, are you seriously want to know that you transfer a movie with speed 400 bits/seconds. How much is that? Since the data are put on the disk, I want to know in what speed they are put on the disk. And on disk I have KB/MB/GB.

Besides, you always measure things in the more convenient way. You measure the distance your car/bike goes in km, but distance from galaxies in light years, but in atomic scale in nm.

The best scale is in xB (bytes), if the connection is measured in KB, I say, show it in KB, if in GB, show it in GB. Bits are not convenient units to measure.
Comment 4 Maciej Pilichowski 2007-09-29 21:16:42 UTC
Spotted, another two reports, with the same reasons given -- looks more like a crusade thing, not a real need.
Comment 5 Juha Tuomala 2007-09-30 11:24:45 UTC
> you always measure things in the more convenient way. 
> You measure the distance your car/bike goes in km, but distance 
> from galaxies in light years, but in atomic scale in nm.

I'm not talking about SI units here (your kilo- and nano-). 
It's about something where your analogy would be metric vs imperial
systems, litres versus gallons.

> Spotted, another two reports

Well done. You could have put issue numbers here too: bug #150320 
and bug #150321.

Comment 6 Joris Guisson 2007-09-30 12:43:43 UTC
Changing the status to UNCONFIRMED is not gonna change the fact, that I'm not gonna add this. I'm willing to accept a patch which makes this an option.
Comment 7 Juha Tuomala 2007-09-30 12:50:52 UTC
It's a wishlist item for discussion and voting. Burying it into
closed items won't help either one.
Comment 8 Joris Guisson 2007-09-30 12:58:13 UTC
You can continue discussing this until the end of the world if you want, but the bug will remain WONTFIX, seeing that I have no intention of implementing this.
Comment 9 Juha Tuomala 2007-09-30 13:15:01 UTC
Nobody told that who should implement it, this is opensource. As already stated that patch will be accepted.

Closing wishlist items just because not finding them intresting is same as trying to shut up the discussion. Nobody make queries from database for items that are already closed.

Comment 10 Joris Guisson 2007-10-01 08:27:04 UTC
OK, then find me a volunteer to implement this.
Comment 11 Joris Guisson 2007-10-29 15:28:32 UTC
I'm going to close this, apparently nobody is interested in doing this, and if there is somebody, he or she can just contact me directly, so there is no need for this bug report.