Xplainsit

Data and bandwidth are around all the time nowadays. Most people don't know how it works.

Data and bandwidth and measured a few different ways and that is one of the big misconceptions that confuse people. There are also prefixes that a used to show how much of the unit of measurement.

The smallest unit of measurement is the bit. A bit is one, one or zero in computer language. Not a whole lot can be communicated with one, one or zero they are grouped into groups of 8 and these are call bytes. A bit is abbreviated with a lower case b and bytes are abbreviated with an upper case B. Now for the prefixes.

Since bits and bytes are so small when compared to a typical file we use profits to simplify them.

Kilo = 1,000

Mega = 1,000,000

Giga = 1,000,000,000

Tera = 1,000,000,000,000

These prefixes can be used with either bits or bytes. So a GB is a gigabyte and a Gb is a gigabit.

All of this becomes interesting when you are shopping for internet service. They give all the speeds in bit because the look fast to the untrained eye. A 24Mb internet connect is capable of 3MBs.