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Maximum Dedicated Bandwidths

Webopedia Staff
Last Updated May 24, 2021 8:00 am

How fast is fast? Chart puts into perspective line speeds used in Internet backbones, LANs, and WANs.

How fast is fast? This chart puts into perspective line speeds used in Internet backbones, LANs, and WANs.

Speed of Internet backbone standards

13.21 Gbps OC-255
10 Gbps OC-192
4.976 Gbps OC-96
2.488 Gbps OC-48, STS-48
1.866 Gbps OC-36
1.244 Gbps OC-24
933.12 Mbps OC-18
622.08 Mbps OC-12, STS-12
466.56 Mbps OC-9
155.52 Mbps OC-3, STS-3
100 Mbps CDDI, FDDI, Fast Ethernet, Category 5 cable
51.84 Mbps OC-1, STS-1
44.736 Mbps T-3, DS-3 North America
34.368 Mbps E-3 Europe
20 Mbps Category 4 cable
16 Mbps Fast Token Ring LANs
10 Mbps Thin Ethernet, category 3 cable, cable modem
8.448 Mbps E-2 Europe
6.312 Mbps T-2, DS-2 North America
6.144 Mbps Standard ADSL downstream
4 Mbps Token Ring LANs
3.152 Mbps DS-1c
2.048 Mbps E-1, DS-1 Europe
1.544 Mbps ADSL, T-1, DS-1 North America
128 Kbps ISDN
64 Kbps DS-0, pulse code modulation
56 Kbps 56flex, U.S. Robotics x2 modems,
33.6 Kbps 56flex, x2 modem communications rate
28.8 Kbps V.34, Rockwell V.Fast Class modems
20 Kbps Level 1 cable, minimum cable data speed
14.4 Kbps V.32bis modem, V.17 fax
9600 bps modem speed circa early 1990s
2400 bps modem speed circa 1980s

Units of Measurement

bit= smallest unit of digital information, i.e. ones & zeros
byte= a set of bits
bps= bits per second
Kbps= kilobits per second =1000 bits per second
Mbps = Million bits per second =1,000,000 bits per second
Gbps = Gigabits per second = 1,000,000,000 (one billion) bits per second
Tbps = Terabits per second = 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) bits per second

*Editor’s note: individual components in the bandwidth measurement chart have not been separated by Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) protocol layer or media.

This article was originally published on June 24, 2010