Michael Stone (12020-12-23): > No, network speeds are traditionally measured in bits because networks > transferred data in bits and telcos dealt with bits, and they sold and > billed bits. Computer internals were measured in bytes and words because > they transferred data in bytes and words. Some people do now talk about > network speeds for computers in byte units, but you're really just swapping > one source of confusion for another when you do that. (There's an immense > amount of existing tooling for network-related information that already uses > bits, so everything that decides bytes are better for networking requires > conversion when dealing with most other networking tools even if it > eliminates conversion when dealing with filesystem or memory tools.) There > isn't one "right answer" that magically simplifies communications. I read this paragraph as the defense of a cargo cult. > "octet" was a term that was actually needed before bytes were > standardized to 8 bits, but that usage confuses far more people than it > helps these days. You are missing part of the issue: many people do not know these details, not only will they neglect proper capitalization, but they may also mistake one word for a typo, and possibly "fix" it. Or maybe they are not native English speakers and their accent will mangle the difference when speaking. Octet may confuse somebody *once*, but then they have learned something, and the risk of ambiguousness is much much lower. Anyway, this is getting out of topic, I will probably not continue discussing this subthread. Regards, -- Nicolas George
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