What is the difference between bite and byte

By using this website you agree to our use of cookies. As sysadmins, we sometimes blend the two—bits and bytes—but there is a difference between them. I'm not saying who that happened to…. So, bits and bytes are both units of data, but what is the actual difference between them? One byte is equivalent to eight bits. A bit is considered to be the smallest unit of data measurement. A bit can be either 0 or 1. Computers interpret our intentions and process information by the respective representation of those "instructions" as bits.

Computers also send and receive data as ones and zeroes—bits. Regardless of the amount of data transmitted over the network, or stored or retrieved from storage, the information is streamed as bits.

How we interpret the rate of the bits transmitted denotes how we communicate that rate of transmission. We can arbitrarily express the rate of transmission as "bit per [any measurement of time].

This gives us an easy way to estimate how long something is going to take. The following table describes this:. As network speeds have increased, it has become easier to describe transmission rates in higher units of measurement. As the medium of transmission changed over the years, so has the transmission rate.

Storing and retrieving data locally on a computer has always been faster than transmitting it over a network. Transmission over the network was and still is limited by the transmission medium used.

As file sizes grew over the years, it was easier to understand how long it would take to store or retrieve the file. The key to understanding the terminology for storage is remembering that eight bits equals one byte. Computers are electronic devices, and they only work with discrete values. So, in the end, any type of data that the computer wants to handle is converted to numbers.

However, computers do not represent numbers in the same way that we humans do. To represent numbers, we use the decimal system that makes use of 10 digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. To represent numbers, modern computers use a binary system made of two digits 0 and 1.

In the electronics that make up the computer, a bit can be represented by having two voltages. To express complex data, larger numbers and therefore, more bits are needed. For instance, a colour can be described by how much red, green, and blue go into making up that colour. Under the system that we use, each value for red, green or blue could take up values Using binary, then, to represent each red, blue or green value it requires 8 bits because.

The byte was first named in , during the design of the IBM Stretch computer. There are a variety of standard prefixes used for bits and bytes, which is where much of the confusion lies, as efforts to make standardization uniform across the international computer industry have yet to be entirely successful.

Generally speaking, most of the confusion in computer terminology is the concern of large-scale systems, and of individuals who work with computers and information technology professionally.