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The Speed of Data Rates
This table shows the stated data rates for the most important end-user and backbone transmission technologies.
Technology |
Speed |
Physical Medium |
Application |
GSM mobile telephone service |
9.6 to 14.4 Kbps |
RF in space (wireless) |
Mobile telephone for business and personal use |
High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data service (HSCSD) |
Up to 56 Kbps |
RF in space (wireless) |
Mobile telephone for business and personal use |
Regular telephone service (POTS) |
Up to 56 Kbps |
twisted pair |
Home and small business access |
Dedicated 56Kbps on frame relay |
56 Kbps |
Various |
Business e-mail with fairly large file attachments |
DS0 |
64 Kbps |
All |
The base signal on a channel in the set of Digital Signal levels |
General Packet Radio System (GPRS) |
56 to 114 Kbps |
RF in space (wireless) |
Mobile telephone for business and personal use |
ISDN |
BRI: 64 Kbps to 128 Kbps |
BRI: Twisted-pair |
BRI: Faster home and small business access |
IDSL |
128 Kbps |
Twisted-pair |
Faster home and small business access |
AppleTalk |
230.4 Kbps |
Twisted pair |
Local area network for Apple devices; several networks can be bridged; non-Apple devices can also be connected |
Enhanced Data GSM Environment (EDGE) |
384 Kbps |
RF in space (wireless) |
Mobile telephone for business and personal use |
satellite |
400 Kbps (DirecPC and others) |
RF in space (wireless) |
Faster home and small enterprise access |
frame relay |
56 Kbps to 1.544 Mbps |
Twisted-pair or coaxial cable |
Large company backbone for LANs to ISP |
DS1/T-1 |
1.544 Mbps |
Twisted-pair, coaxial cable, or optical fiber |
Large company to ISP |
Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service (UMTS) |
Up to 2 Mbps |
RF in space (wireless) |
Mobile telephone for business and personal use (available in 2002 or later) |
E-carrier |
2.048 Mbps |
Twisted-pair, coaxial cable, or optical fiber |
32-channel European equivalent of T-1 |
T-1C (DS1C) |
3.152 Mbps |
Twisted-pair, coaxial cable, or optical fiber |
Large company to ISP |
IBM Token Ring/802.5 |
4 Mbps (also 16 Mbps) |
Twisted-pair, coaxial cable, or optical fiber |
Second most commonly-used local area network after Ethernet |
DS2/T-2 |
6.312 Mbps |
Twisted-pair, coaxial cable, or optical fiber |
Large company to ISP |
Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) |
512 Kbps to 8 Mbps |
Twisted-pair (used as a digital, broadband medium) |
Home, small business, and enterprise access using existing copper lines |
E-2 |
8.448 Mbps |
Twisted-pair, coaxial cable, or optical fiber |
Carries four multiplexed E-1 signals |
cable modem |
512 Kbps to 52 Mbps |
Coaxial cable (usually uses Ethernet); in some systems, telephone used for upstream requests |
Home, business, school access |
Ethernet |
10 Mbps |
10BASE-T (twisted-pair); 10BASE-2 or -5 (coaxial cable); 10BASE-F (optical fiber) |
Most popular business local area network (LAN) |
IBM Token Ring/802.5 |
16 Mbps (also 4 Mbps) |
Twisted-pair, coaxial cable, or optical fiber |
Second most commonly-used local area network after Ethernet |
E-3 |
34.368 Mbps |
Twisted-pair or optical fiber |
Carries 16 E-l signals |
DS3/T-3 |
44.736 Mbps |
Coaxial cable |
ISP to Internet infrastructure |
OC-1 |
51.84 Mbps |
Optical fiber |
ISP to Internet infrastructure |
High-Speed Serial Interface (HSSI) |
Up to 53 Mbps |
HSSI cable |
Between router hardware and WAN lines |
Fast Ethernet |
100 Mbps |
100BASE-T (twisted pair); 100BASE-T (twisted pair); 100BASE-T (optical fiber) |
Workstations with 10 Mbps Ethernet cards can plug into a Fast Ethernet LAN |
Fiber Distributed-Data Interface (FDDI) |
100 Mbps |
Optical fiber |
Large, wide-range LAN usually in a large company or a larger ISP |
T-3D (DS3D) |
135 Mbps |
Optical fiber |
ISP to Internet infrastructure |
E-4 |
139.264 Mbps |
Optical fiber |
Carries 4 E3 channels |
OC-3/SDH |
155.52 Mbps |
Optical fiber |
Large company backbone |
E-5 |
565.148 Mbps |
Optical fiber |
Carries 4 E4 channels |
OC-12/STM-4 |
622.08 Mbps |
Optical fiber |
Internet backbone |
Gigabit Ethernet |
1 Gbps |
Optical fiber (and "copper" up to 100 meters) |
Workstations/networks with 10/100 Mbps Ethernet plug into Gigabit Ethernet switches |
OC-24 |
1.244 Gbps |
Optical fiber |
Internet backbone |
SciNet |
2.325 Gbps (15 OC-3 lines) |
Optical fiber |
Part of the vBNS backbone |
OC-48/STM-16 |
2.488 Gbps |
Optical fiber |
Internet backbone |
OC-192/STM-64 |
10 Gbps |
Optical fiber |
Backbone |
OC-256 |
13.271 Gbps |
Optical fiber |
Backbone |
Key and Explanation
We use the U.S. English "Kbps" as the abbreviation for "thousands of bits per second." In international English outside the U.S., the equivalent usage is "kbits s-1" or "kbits/s".
Engineers use data rate rather than speed, but speed (as in "Why isn't my Web page getting here faster?") seems more meaningful for the less technically inclined. Many of us tend to think that the number of bits getting somewhere over a period of time is their speed of travel.
Relative to data transmission, a related term, bandwidth or "capacity," means how wide the pipe is and how quickly the bits can be sent down the channels in the pipe. (The analogy of multiple lanes on a superhighway with cars containing speed governors may help. One reason why digital traffic flows faster than voice traffic on the same copper line is because digital has managed to convert a one-lane or narrowband highway into a many-lane or broadband highway.)
These "speeds" are aggregate speeds. That is, the data on the multiple signal channels within the carrier is usually allocated by channel for different uses or among different users.
Key: "T" = T-carrier system in U.S., Canada, and Japan...."DS"= digital signal (that travels on the T-carrier or E-carrier)..."E" = Equivalent of "T" that uses all 8 bits per channel; used in countries other than U.S. Canada, and Japan...."OC" = optical carrier (Synchronous Optical Network)...."STM" = Synchronous Transport Modules (see Synchronous Digital Hierarchy)
Only the most common technologies are shown. "Physical medium" is stated generally and doesn't specify the classes or numbers of pairs of twisted pair or whether optical fiber is single-mode or multimode. The effective distance of a technology is not shown. There are published standards for many of these technologies. Some of these are indicated on pages linked to from the table.
Cable modem note:The upper limit of 52 Mbps on a cable is to an ISP, not currently to an individual PC. Most of today's PCs are limited to an internal design that can accomodate no more than 10 Mbps (although the PCI bus itself carries data at a faster speed). The 52 Mbps cable channel is subdivided among individual users. Obviously, the faster the channel, the fewer channels an ISP will require and the lower the cost to support an individual user.