In the world of data communication, there is regular use of a specific kind of metric system to describe particular components and rates of computing actions. When dealing with the rate of data transfer, the bit is the base unit and it is a single binary digit that is equivalent to 1 or 0. A kilobit or kb represents 1000 bits as well as being equivalent to 10^3 bits while the megabit or mb is represents 10^6 or 1000,000 bits. The highest bit unit is the Gigabit or Gb which is 10^9 bits or 1,000,000,000 bits. Kilobits are normally used to measure the quantity of data being transferred per second within two telecommunication points. The value is represented as kilobits per second or Kbps.
The unit usually used when describing data storage or memory size, is the byte and one byte (b) is equivalent to 8 bits. Similarly, one kilobyte is equivalent to 1,024 bytes. Owing to computer architecture being in binary form, the bytes have to be exponents or multiples of two. Most manufactures of hard disks and newer models of BIOSes make use of decimal megabytes or 10^6, and this means that one kilobyte is 10^3 bytes or 1000 bytes.
Bandwidth is used as a measure of data amount that is able to be transmitted via a connection in a certain amount of time. It is sometimes referred to as the data transfer rate or baud rate and is represented in bits per second or bps. One kilobit in this case is equal to 1000 bits of bandwidth. DSO or Digital signal O is the standard used transmission of to the standard used transmission rate that is digital form and its rate 64 kbps. This is the bandwidth for standard telephone channels. 64 Kbps has a DSO multiple of 1 while a data rate of 128 Kbps has a DSO multiple of 2.
An illustration of bandwidth calculation is as follows; 1 byte has 8bits therefore if a PC receives 5KB of data or 5000 bytes per second, then it acquires 40,000 bps. This is calculated to by multiplying 5000 bytes by 8 bits which is equal to 40,000 bps or 40kbps. Bandwidth is related to capacity and it could be affected by the cables used for connection. The cables have a certain capacity which can allow transmission of only a particular amount of data. Bits, bytes and bandwidth are all related in one way or another and to get the value of each, the appropriate conversions should be carried out.
