On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 08:07:12PM -0400, Peter Renzland wrote:
> Wget can be used to measure download data rate.
> For example, 
> wget --output-document=/dev/null 
> http://speedtest.wdc01.softlayer.com/downloads/test500.zip
> 
> Then observe the progress meter and kill the process.
> 
> IMHO, wget thinks a MB is 2^20 (== 1MiB), instead of 10^6.  This results in a 
> 5% error.
> (Softlayer seems to have made the same error.)
> 
> Am I wrong?  Have others noticed that?  According to wget's definition of 
> "bug", this error does not seem to be a "bug".  Or?
> (It doesn't crash -- just gives a wrong answer, based on a wrong assumption.)

It used to juse say K/s or M/s and they didn't want to change it to KB
and MB to avoid wasting characters on the line for the progress bar.
I guess someone eventually did change it, but did not want to change it
to KiB and MiB.

If you use --report-speed=bits you get Mb/s and Kb/s and I think those
are actually "correct".

Pretty sure wget predates the existance of KiB and MiB anyhow and changing
the meaning later could "break" things.  Probably wouldn't though.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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