Why download speed limit is now kbit/s instead of kb/s?

[Moogal™]

Title

[potato]

it's not? i'm seeing MB/s on my end

[Orion Invictus]

"kb" is "kilobit", or "kbit". Did you mean kB?

[Moogal™]

On Steam Deck and Steam client beta it is kilobit/s. Therefore will probably be standard in future Steam? (yes i know the difference between them)

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Moogal™:

On Steam Deck and Steam client beta it is kilobit/s. Therefore will probably be standard in future Steam? (yes i know the difference between them)

Maybe it's because some people don't know the difference between "b" and "B", so Valve wants to be explicit about it to try to cut down on the threads asking about it?

[Moogal™]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

"kb" is "kilobit", or "kbit". Did you mean kB?

Yes i meant kB/s in my last part of OP sentence.

[Yzal]

They ran out of kb/s

[John]

10000 is 10 Megabytes so just deal with their nonsense.

[Elucidator]

They mean the "Download Speed Limiting" setting.
in the latest Steam Client Beta, you can apparently no longer? adjust the download speed limitation by using bytes. You're forced to type in the value in bits.

I have seen a number of complains about it, someone even said it was 'old fashioned'.
Its not that difficult, just do bits / 8. Sigh-

Most routers use bits, not bytes, when defining speed limitations.

[Moogal™]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

They mean the "Download Speed Limiting" setting.
in the latest Steam Client Beta, you can apparently no longer? adjust the download speed limitation by using bytes. You're forced to type in the value in bits.

I have seen a number of complains about it, someone even said it was 'old fashioned'.
Its not that difficult, just do bytes / 8. Sigh-

Most routers use bits, not bytes, when defining speed limitations.

"Not that difficult" sure but unneccessary when the old system in kB or MB worked so well.

[T9]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

They mean the "Download Speed Limiting" setting.
in the latest Steam Client Beta, you can apparently no longer? adjust the download speed limitation by using bytes. You're forced to type in the value in bits.

I have seen a number of complains about it, someone even said it was 'old fashioned'.
Its not that difficult, just do bytes / 8. Sigh-

Most routers use bits, not bytes, when defining speed limitations.

Sure or use they more useful, established, known thing
Sigh- (lol)

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

They mean the "Download Speed Limiting" setting.
in the latest Steam Client Beta, you can apparently no longer? adjust the download speed limitation by using bytes. You're forced to type in the value in bits.

I have seen a number of complains about it, someone even said it was 'old fashioned'.
Its not that difficult, just do bytes / 8. Sigh-

Most routers use bits, not bytes, when defining speed limitations.

Other way around, you multiply by 8 to go from bytes to bits. It's also unnecessary when most people have speeds in the Mbps or even Gbps. Way too many zeroes there.

[Elucidator]

I meant to type bits there;
I am surprised that wasn't noticed earlier.

but anyway I wanted to explain what the situation was, since people, myself included figured that they meant something else. (the download speed setting for example, what it displays)
Currently you can only type in speed limitation by using bits.
I have seen more people complain about the change, even today. I am not sure if it is intended or not, but it is something on Steam beta only. Perhaps its part of the new test phase and chances will be made later so that users can use bytes again.

[Sir Walrus]

hi I'm late but this is the top google hit for 'steam kilobyte'

You can fix this by scrolling down in the Downloads panel and hitting the 'Display download rates in bits per second' toggle. It affects this speed limit box as well.