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The upload/download indicated in System Monitor is always about an order of magnitude lower than what is reported by online tests such as speedtest.net or att.com/speedtest

Does anyone know why this is?

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The difference between the network throughput measurements of Gnome System Monitor and the two mentioned online speed tests may be the difference between bytes and bits, because GSM can be configured to display either in units of bits or bytes.

In short: 8 bits make up 1 byte. Hence 8 Megabits (Mb) or 8,000,000 bits, make up 1 Megabyte (MB) or 1000² = 1,000,000 bytes.

To make things more complicated, GSM would display transfer speed in Mebibyte (MiB), which contains 1,024² = 1,048,576 bytes. Even worse, these online speed tests aren't always clear, whether they consider 1 Megabit to be 1000² or 1024² bits.

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  • I knew that but that does that match either after doing the math.
    – solsTiCe
    Jun 1, 2015 at 15:04
  • No, 8 Megabits make up 10^6 bytes, not 2^20 bytes.
    – muru
    Jun 1, 2015 at 15:50
  • You're right. I don't know what I was thinking. Jun 1, 2015 at 16:12
  • System monitor can be set to read bits or Bytes
    – Jean-Marie
    Jun 1, 2015 at 16:14
  • @Jean-Marie: Ok, I addressed that too. Jun 1, 2015 at 16:19

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