Ethernet – Quantify actual vs theoretical network throughput

With throughput defined as the amount of data transferred from point A to point B in a period of time. The significant variables in throughput are: Latency, Packet Size, and Retransmissions (quality). This was proven with the Mathis Equation.

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/thru-vs-loss.html

TCP Basics: TCP connections establish a session with a SYN, the receiving machine sends and ACK, Then data flows. When the window (setting in windows saying how much data to collect before it asks for validation/acknowledgement of receipt) fills up another set of acknowledgements are sent to start the next flow of data.

If your environment has the default MTU of 1500, and you introduce a device that has an MTU of 1460, this will slow down your network because all packets flowing through the device will be fragmented; when the 1500 packet hits the device with MTU of 1460 it will fragment the packet into two packets and transmit it.

If you have Jumbo frames enabled and your MTU is 9220 you will get much higher throughput, 5 times higher. Each payload is larger even though the packet has the same latency.

In short: Throughput is conditional and depended on both host and network device settings. Use the Mathis Equation as a guide for what you could expect with the given data points for your network. Validate your findings and verify units; Megabit/sec and Megabyte or Kilobit and Kilobyte are not the same.

tl;dr: gigabits per second (Gbps)

Your 470588235 is bits-per-second. 8 bits per character; cancels the characters unit in the numerator, leaving your bits per second overall. "bps" (as in, Gbps, Mbps, Kbps) means "bits per second", versus the "B" (as in GB, MB, KB) meaning "byte(s)".

The "G" prefix normally means the metric "giga", which is 1,000^3 (or 10^9). So you would -- as you've shown -- shift the decimal nine spots. Giving you about 0.4Gbps.

Note that the kilo, mega, giga, etc concepts can also be used in a binary (base-2 math) context. That is written as "Ki" (meaning x1024, instead of "K" meaning x1,000), "Mi" meaning x1024^2 (instead of M meaning x1,000^2.)