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Can bits, bytes, Bits, Bytes, MBytes etc etc be consistent?

It seems this could all be a little more consistent. As I click throughout NTA, I see KBPS, BYTES, Gbytes, Mbps, Mbytes etc etc. It just seems to be all over the place.

How about sticking with some sort of format. Like if you look at Top 5 Applications. Select WWW HTTP (80) for example. Expand it and click on a netflow device. Then look at any of the graphs: Top 5 Protocols, Transmitters, Services etc. They show "LAST 15 MINUTES, RATE (KBPS) under the titles. Then in the table below the graph there is a column labeled BYTES. Then in that column usage is Gbytes, Mbytes type format. Looking on the graph the Y axis shows Mbps.

To my knowledge below are the standards:

kBps = kilobyte per second

kbps = kilobit per second

MBps = megabyte per second

Mbps = megabit per second

GBps = gigabyte per second

Gbps = gigabit per second

If I see a graph showing Mbps on the Y axis, then the table below should in my mind give the data in Mbps and not Mbytes.

Does this not confuse other users?

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ameruz

This still seems to be the case, 4 years after your post. I am surprised nobody has found it worthwhile to clean up this labeling.

FormerMember

Honestly for such an annoying issue I am surprised this has not received any attention. For example, when we look at NTA Summary and select an interface in NetFlow Sources the traffic in and out show as xxxMbps. Convention states that this reads as Megabits per second and clearly should read as Mega Bytes Per Second. We would really appreciate if someone could give us some info on this please. We are currently using SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer version: 4.0.3.

Martin.Krivanek

Hello,

let me clarify few things around units in NTA, hopefully this will help to understand the values better. As for graphs in NTA - its unit can be selected in Edit page for given resource. Most common ones are rate (in bps - bits per second), data transferred (bytes) and percent of total traffic (%). The confusing bit here is that selected unit affects only the graph, it does not affect the table below the graph (legend). The legend always shows amount of transferred data (hence bytes) within given time range, it's not affected by selected unit in any way. Both the label and units in legend are correct, they indeed show bytes. I can see how this can be confusing, if the graph is set to rate, one could expect that legend will also switch to rate and show the average (and similarly for other units). We'll definitely consider this change, would it clear the confusion?

As for the NetFlow Sources, this one is not affected by selected time period at all. It shows recent rate to allow quick identification of overload interfaces. As commonly used in networking the unit is bps, that is bits per second (as both label and unit show). Same unit is used for interface speed (1 Gbit interface is capable of rate 1 gigabit per second).

Regards,

Martin

michal.hrncirik

Hi Amer, does the explanation from Martin below helps, or would you expect NTA provide different visualization?