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network speeds

carl_townshend
Spotlight
Spotlight

Hi all, when we talk about network speeds and monitoring the network, do we talk in bits and megabits? some people think its bytes!!

3 Replies 3

Hi,

First of all the difference between MB/Mb and KB/Kb =

the Big "B" is Bytes

and the small "b" is bits

In our case, Networks its bits ( Mbps,Kbps etc.)

Hope this answers your query.

thats excellent thanks

Joseph W. Doherty
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Bits are used in networks since we want to represent binary modulation rates and we're usually dealing with serial transmission. (There's also Baud, often used to be used with dial-up modems, which measures signal transition rates; often incorrectly used as being the same as bps.)

Bytes are usually significant to display characters (i.e. ASCII, EBCDIC) and often don't correspond to non-character data usage. For example, non-network people "knowing" that a byte is 8 bits usually don't understand why 10 Mbps Ethernet doesn't deliver 1.25 MBps. (For fun, explain how RS232's usage of 1, 1 and 1/2, or 2 stop bits impacts effective transmission rate, especially when using 1 and 1/2 stop bits.)

BTW: Bytes came from being part of a machine "word" which often stored a single display character and could also often be directly addressed.

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