Bytes and bits

I have a little argument with a 17 year old, would appreciate a
response, and if you know of a web page to explain this, many thanks.



Do wireless internet providers [WISP] sell their bandwidth in bits or
bytes?

Anyone know of a WISP selling bandwidth at 256 Kbytes/second for
$50.00/month?


thx

On 17/4/04 5:41 pm, in article
(E-Mail Removed), "(E-Mail Removed)"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> I have a little argument with a 17 year old, would appreciate a
> response, and if you know of a web page to explain this, many thanks.
>
> Do wireless internet providers [WISP] sell their bandwidth in bits or
> bytes?
>
> Anyone know of a WISP selling bandwidth at 256 Kbytes/second for
> $50.00/month?
>
They sell neither - they sell access to a common wireless infrastructure so
bits or bytes is irrelevant - you get a speed, in bits and bytes that varies
according to the number of users accessing the wireless node.

So I think the answer isn't what you're looking for but maybe it is the
wrong question you are asking !

If you mean what bandwidth do wifi providers use for backhaul, its probably
a minimum of 512 kbit/s giving all users an aggregated access limit of about
60kbytes/sec. ..... In the download direction. Uploading speed is normally
half that with ADSL, the same with SDSL.

I think you need to find out what the question really is.

Hope that helps !

Generally in bits/s. And it may not be the 8 bits to the byte conversion
that you are used to. The 8 bits may have added start and stop bits leading
to 10 bits to the byte being transferred and additional overhead for packet
headers. Then there's also data compression and that may give you more
bytes/s throughput.

Cable modems in the US top out around 2 Mbit/s (but you might be able to pay
more and get more throughput). That equates to about 200kbyte/s.

I assume that wireless ISPs could use both bits/s and bytes/s when selling
bandwidth. Just as with cable modems, you would be sharing the total
bandwidth with other people in your area so you may sometimes experience
less than the advertised rate if too many people are connected at one time.
On the other hand, you would not experience more than the advertised rate
since it is possible to limit modems to a maximum rate even though a higher
rate is possible (e.g. with cable modems). Wireless tends to suffer from
interference, so you may experience less than the advertised rate in bad
weather.

-Yves

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) s.com...
> I have a little argument with a 17 year old, would appreciate a
> response, and if you know of a web page to explain this, many thanks.
>
>
>
> Do wireless internet providers [WISP] sell their bandwidth in bits or
> bytes?
>
> Anyone know of a WISP selling bandwidth at 256 Kbytes/second for
> $50.00/month?
>
>
> thx

Bandwidth is always quoted in multiples of bits/second. Some confusion
arises because memory and disk storage are measured in bytes, and
consequently transfer rates to these devices are quoted in multiples of
bytes/second.

The confusion is compounded by two things.

- The conventional "kilo" means 1024 when applied to memory storage devices,
and 1000 when applied to network bandwidth; similary, mega and giga mean
1024**2 and 1024**3 for memory, but 1000**2 and 1000**3 for network
bandwidth.

- The most commonly used abbreviations for data transfer rates are obscure.
If the "b" in "bps" is capitalized, it designates bytes, if not, it
designates bits. An initial "m" could mean "mega" or "milli" in different
contexts, so "M" is conventionally used to mean "mega", "m" to mean "milli".
For consistency, the "k" for "kilo" and "g" for "giga" are usually
capitalized, although no confusion is possible here. So, 100 Kbps means
100000 bits/second, and refers to network bandwidth, but 100 KBps means
102400 bytes/second.

An alternative recommended and used by various standards bodies is to use
"bits/sec", "Kbits/sec", and so on. This is much clearer, but I find that
the old conventions are still universally used by vendors and among users on
the web, so it's still necessary to understand them.

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) s.com...
> I have a little argument with a 17 year old, would appreciate a
> response, and if you know of a web page to explain this, many thanks.
>
>
>
> Do wireless internet providers [WISP] sell their bandwidth in bits or
> bytes?
>
> Anyone know of a WISP selling bandwidth at 256 Kbytes/second for
> $50.00/month?
>
>
> thx

Yves Konigshofer wrote:

> Generally in bits/s. And it may not be the 8 bits to the byte conversion
> that you are used to. The 8 bits may have added start and stop bits
> leading to 10 bits to the byte being transferred and additional overhead
> for packet headers.

The start and stop bits are used on asyncronous circuits, such as dial up
modems only. They are not used on high speed access.

--

Fundamentalism is fundamentally wrong.

To reply to this message, replace everything to the left of "@" with
james.knott.

On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 16:41:42 +0000, nother wrote:

> I have a little argument with a 17 year old, would appreciate a
> response, and if you know of a web page to explain this, many thanks.
>
>
>
> Do wireless internet providers [WISP] sell their bandwidth in bits or
> bytes?
>
> Anyone know of a WISP selling bandwidth at 256 Kbytes/second for
> $50.00/month?
>
>
> thx

They sell in bits/Second. They are refering the the channel speed not the
actual data delivered. The actuall data throughput will depend on what
format the data is send in. Then you have to contend with TCP UDP ATM
etc...

Ron

Correction - for data transfer rates, "kilo", etc. always mean powers of
1000, whether you're talking bytes or bits. "kilo", etc. refer to powers of
1024 when referring to amount of memory, as in 1 kilobyte of memory = 1024
bytes.

"gary" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:lFegc.18022$(E-Mail Removed) om...
> Bandwidth is always quoted in multiples of bits/second. Some confusion
> arises because memory and disk storage are measured in bytes, and
> consequently transfer rates to these devices are quoted in multiples of
> bytes/second.
>
> The confusion is compounded by two things.
>
> - The conventional "kilo" means 1024 when applied to memory storage
devices,
> and 1000 when applied to network bandwidth; similary, mega and giga mean
> 1024**2 and 1024**3 for memory, but 1000**2 and 1000**3 for network
> bandwidth.
>
> - The most commonly used abbreviations for data transfer rates are
obscure.
> If the "b" in "bps" is capitalized, it designates bytes, if not, it
> designates bits. An initial "m" could mean "mega" or "milli" in different
> contexts, so "M" is conventionally used to mean "mega", "m" to mean
"milli".
> For consistency, the "k" for "kilo" and "g" for "giga" are usually
> capitalized, although no confusion is possible here. So, 100 Kbps means
> 100000 bits/second, and refers to network bandwidth, but 100 KBps means
> 102400 bytes/second.
>
> An alternative recommended and used by various standards bodies is to use
> "bits/sec", "Kbits/sec", and so on. This is much clearer, but I find that
> the old conventions are still universally used by vendors and among users
on
> the web, so it's still necessary to understand them.
>
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed) s.com...
> > I have a little argument with a 17 year old, would appreciate a
> > response, and if you know of a web page to explain this, many thanks.
> >
> >
> >
> > Do wireless internet providers [WISP] sell their bandwidth in bits or
> > bytes?
> >
> > Anyone know of a WISP selling bandwidth at 256 Kbytes/second for
> > $50.00/month?
> >
> >
> > thx
>
>

One ISP is Canada that I know of is www.airsurfer.ca they sell is in Mbits.
and a total of Gigs.

Michael
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) s.com...
> I have a little argument with a 17 year old, would appreciate a
> response, and if you know of a web page to explain this, many thanks.
>
>
>
> Do wireless internet providers [WISP] sell their bandwidth in bits or
> bytes?
>
> Anyone know of a WISP selling bandwidth at 256 Kbytes/second for
> $50.00/month?
>
>
> thx

On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 20:31:05 GMT, in alt.internet.wireless , James Knott
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Yves Konigshofer wrote:
>
>> Generally in bits/s. And it may not be the 8 bits to the byte conversion
>> that you are used to. The 8 bits may have added start and stop bits
>> leading to 10 bits to the byte being transferred and additional overhead
>> for packet headers.
>
>The start and stop bits are used on asyncronous circuits, such as dial up
>modems only. They are not used on high speed access.

This may or may not be true (I don't think its correct by the way, ethernet
still uses extra bits), but generally the bps speed doesn't translate into
Kb/sec via a simple sum, due to a bunch of other factors.

--
Mark McIntyre
CLC FAQ <http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html>
CLC readme: <http://www.angelfire.com/ms3/bchambless0/welcome_to_clc.html>


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Mark McIntyre wrote:

>>The start and stop bits are used on asyncronous circuits, such as dial up
>>modems only. They are not used on high speed access.
>
> This may or may not be true (I don't think its correct by the way,
> ethernet still uses extra bits), but generally the bps speed doesn't
> translate into Kb/sec via a simple sum, due to a bunch of other factors.
>

The only extra bits that ethernet uses are the header and CRC (error
detection. Everything else is data. However that data will include IP
header etc. There are no start & stop bits used in ethernet.

--

Fundamentalism is fundamentally wrong.

To reply to this message, replace everything to the left of "@" with
james.knott.