Comment 5 for bug 578377

FWIW, I also found the default to be a questionable choice, as well as the justification for it - ie the tools mentioned aren't really equivalent to this one - they're tools for transferring files, not for monitoring network bandwidth.

However, I did a quick search for 'bandwidth monitoring tools' and turned up this page:

https://www.binarytides.com/linux-commands-monitor-network/

which listed these tools:

1. Overall bandwidth - nload, bmon, slurm, bwm-ng, cbm, speedometer, netload

They all seemed to be equivalent to this one so I figured I'd see what they use by default.

bits: nload, bmon
bytes: slurm, bwm-ng, cbm, speedometer, netload

I would imagine that the use of bytes is more due to ifconfig output also using bytes:

        TX packets 161117 bytes 34768685 (34.7 MB)

or they use the same source.

Anyway, while not the result I was hoping for, it seems there is more precedent for bytes than bits :(
At least we can change it, so it matches what our ISPs quote :)