diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index cf4c20644e..ca9b6b3b21 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ Merged from 3.11:
  * Update Jackson from 2.9.10 to 2.12.5 (CASSANDRA-16851)
  * Make assassinate more resilient to missing tokens (CASSANDRA-16847)
 Merged from 3.0:
+ * Fix conversion from megabits to bytes in streaming rate limiter (CASSANDRA-17243)
  * Upgrade logback to 1.2.9 (CASSANDRA-17204)
  * Avoid race in AbstractReplicationStrategy endpoint caching (CASSANDRA-16673)
  * Fix abort when window resizing during cqlsh COPY (CASSANDRA-15230)
diff --git a/NEWS.txt b/NEWS.txt
index 749b5317fc..1649ccdf80 100644
--- a/NEWS.txt
+++ b/NEWS.txt
@@ -44,6 +44,12 @@ New features
 
 Upgrading
 ---------
+    - The config properties for setting the streaming throughput `stream_throughput_outbound_megabits_per_sec` and
+      `inter_dc_stream_throughput_outbound_megabits_per_sec` were incorrectly interpreted as mebibits. This has
+      been fixed by CASSANDRA-17243, so the values for these properties will now indicate a throughput ~4.6% lower than
+      what was actually applied in previous versions. This also affects the setters and getters for these properties in
+      the JMX MBean `org.apache.cassandra.db:type=StorageService` and the nodetool commands `set/getstreamthroughput`
+      and `set/getinterdcstreamthroughput`.
     - Before you upgrade, if you are using `cassandra.auth_bcrypt_gensalt_log2_rounds` property,
       confirm it is set to value lower than 31 otherwise Cassandra will fail to start. See CASSANDRA-9384
       for further details. You also need to regenerate passwords for users for who the password
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/streaming/StreamManager.java b/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/streaming/StreamManager.java
index c8c091d486..849f7b5112 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/streaming/StreamManager.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/streaming/StreamManager.java
@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ public class StreamManager implements StreamManagerMBean
 
     public static class StreamRateLimiter
     {
-        public static final double BYTES_PER_MEGABIT = (1024 * 1024) / 8; // from bits
+        public static final double BYTES_PER_MEGABIT = (1000 * 1000) / 8.0;
         private static final RateLimiter limiter = RateLimiter.create(calculateRateInBytes());
         private static final RateLimiter interDCLimiter = RateLimiter.create(calculateInterDCRateInBytes());
         private final boolean isLocalDC;