Radio Shack 3Com Bigpicture Bits per second bps, Bmp, Byte, Carrier, Character

GLOSSARY

bits per second (bps)

The bits (binary digits) per second rate. Thousands of bits per second are expressed as kilobits per second or Kbps.

.bmp

This DOS three-character extension at the end of a file name identifies the file contents as bit-mapped graphics (FILENAME.BMP).

byte

A group of binary digits stored and operated upon as a unit. In user documentation, the term usually refers to 8-bit units or characters. One kilobyte (KB) is equal to 1,024 bytes or characters; 640 KB indicates 655,360 bytes or characters.

carrier

A tone signifying a connection the modem can alter to communicate data across telephone lines.

character

A representation, coded in binary digits, of a letter, number, or other symbol.

characters per second (CPS)

A data transfer rate generally estimated from the bit rate and the character length. For example, at 2400 bps, 8-bit characters with start/stop bits (for a total of ten bits per character) will be transmitted at a rate of approximately 240 characters per second (cps). Some protocols employ advanced techniques, such as longer transmission frames and data compression, to increase cps.

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