<communications, unit> (Or "data ransfer rate", "transmission
rate") The amount of data transferred per second by a
communications channel or a computing or storage device.
Data rate is measured in units of bits per second (written
"b/s" or "bps"), bytes per second (Bps), or baud.
When applied to data rate, the multiplier prefixes "kilo-",
"mega-", "giga-", etc. (and their abbreviations, "k", "M",
"G", etc.) always denote powers of 1000. For example, 64 kbps
is 64,000 bits per second. This contrasts with units of
storage where they stand for powers of 1024, e.g. 1 KB = 1024
bytes.
[Relationship with "bandwidth"?]
(2002-03-23)
Nearby terms:
Dataphone Digital Service « DataPoint « data processing « data rate » data segment » data service unit » data set
