Convert a bit rate into packets per second for a given frame size, including preamble and interframe gap.
Every Ethernet frame carries 20 bytes of overhead the frame size does not include — a 7-byte preamble, a 1-byte start delimiter and a 12-byte interframe gap. Dividing the bit rate by the full on-wire bit count gives the true packet rate. Forwarding hardware and software data planes are rated in packets per second, not bits per second, so small-frame traffic can saturate a device at a fraction of its nominal bandwidth.
Packets Per Second
pps = bits per second ÷ (frame bytes × 8), where frame bytes include the 8-byte preamble and 12-byte interframe gap.
Payload efficiency
payload efficiency = payload bytes ÷ wire bytes
pps = bits per second ÷ (frame bytes × 8), where frame bytes include the 8-byte preamble and 12-byte interframe gap. Every Ethernet frame carries 20 bytes of overhead the frame size does not include — a 7-byte preamble, a 1-byte start delimiter and a 12-byte interframe gap. Dividing the bit rate by the full on-wire bit count gives the true packet rate.
Forwarding hardware and software data planes are rated in packets per second, not bits per second, so small-frame traffic can saturate a device at a fraction of its nominal bandwidth.
This calculator takes 3 inputs: Throughput, Ethernet frame size, Preamble + interframe gap. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.
At 64 bytes the wire cost is 84 bytes, so a 10 Gbit/s link carries 14.88 million packets per second — roughly 18× the rate of 1518-byte frames. Per-packet work dominates, so devices hit their pps ceiling long before their bandwidth ceiling.