Conventions
By convention, bus and network data rates are denoted either in bit/s (bits per second) or byte/s (bytes per second). In general, parallel interfaces are quoted in byte/s and serial in bit/s. The more commonly used is shown below in bold type.
On devices like modems, bytes may be more than 8 bits long because they may be individually padded out with additional start and stop bits; the figures below will reflect this. Where channels use line codes (such as Ethernet, Serial ATA and PCI Express), quoted rates are for the decoded signal.
The figures below are simplex data rates, which may conflict with the duplex rates vendors sometimes use in promotional materials. Where two values are listed, the first value is the downstream rate and the second value is the upstream rate.
All quoted figures are in metric decimal units, where:
- 1 byte (B) = 8 bit
- 1 kbit/s = 1,000 bit/s
- 1 Mbit/s = 1,000,000 bit/s
- 1 Gbit/s = 1,000,000,000 bit/s
- 1 kB/s = 1,000 byte/s
- 1 MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s
- 1 GB/s = 1,000,000,000 byte/s
- 1 TB/s = 1,000,000,000,000 byte/s
Note that this goes against the traditional use of binary prefixes for memory size. These decimal prefixes have long been established in data communications. This occurred before 1998 when IEC and other organizations introduced new binary prefixes and attempted to standardize their use across all computing applications.
Read more about this topic: List Of Device Bit Rates
Famous quotes containing the word conventions:
“Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole—so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader’s consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“What people don’t realize is that intimacy has its conventions as well as ordinary social intercourse. There are three cardinal rules—don’t take somebody else’s boyfriend unless you’ve been specifically invited to do so, don’t take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)