Gbps - Tech Terms

Gbps Definition (Wikipedia Now): Stands for "Gigabits per second." 1Gbps is equal to 1,000 Megabits per second (Mbps), or 1,000,000,000 bits per second. Gbps is commonly used to measure data transfer speeds between hardware devices.

For many years, data transfer speeds were only measured in Mbps and Kbps. However, modern hardware interfaces can now transfer data over one gigabit per second, which makes Gbps a necessary unit of measurement. Examples of these interfaces include SATA 3 (6Gbps), USB 3.0 (5Gbps), and Thunderbolt (10Gbps). Additionally, Gigabit Ethernet can transfer data up to 1Gbps.

NOTE: The lowercase "b" is Gbps indicates it stands for "Gigabits" rather than "Gigabytes." Since one byte equals eight bits, 1GBps is equal to 8Gbps. While storage capacity is typically measured in bytes, data transfer speeds are typically measured in bits. Therefore, Gbps is much more commonly used than GBps.

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Exabyte - Tech Terms

Exabyte Definition (Wikipedia Now): An exabyte is 10¹⁸ or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

One exabyte (abbreviated "EB") is equal to 1,000 petabytes and precedes the zettabyteunit of measurement. Exabytes are slightly smaller than exbibytes, which contain 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 (2⁶⁰) bytes.

The exabyte unit of measure measurement is so large, it is not used to measure the capacity of data storage devices. Even the storage capacity of the largest cloud storage centers is measured in petabytes, which is a fraction of one exabyte. Instead, exabytes are used to measure the sum of multiple storage networks or the amount of data transferred over the Internet in a certain amount of time. For example, several hundred exabytes of data are transferred over the Internet each year.

NOTE: View a list of all the units of measurement used for measuring data storage.

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Enum - Tech Terms

Enum Definition (Wikipedia Now): Enum, short for "enumerated," is a data type that consists of predefined values. A constant or variable defined as an enum can store one of the values listed in the enum declaration.

Enums are used in both source code and database tables. For example, an enum that stores multiple colors may be declared in C# as follows:

enum Color { white, red, green, blue, black };

A column in a MySQL database table may be defined as below:

Color ENUM ('white', 'red', 'green', 'blue', 'black')

A variable or database value defined as Color can be assigned any of the five colors listed in the enum declarations above. If assigned any other value besides one of the five colors above, it will remain undefined and may produce an error depending on the context. Also, enum variables may only contain one value. If a variable may need to store one or more predefined values, it should be defined as a SET instead.

Enums provide a highly structured way to store data since they can only store a single pre-defined value. While this helps ensure data integrity, it also limits their flexibility. Therefore, enum variables are most appropriate for storing discrete data that can only be one of a few possible values. Examples include colors, sizes, categories, months, and days of the week. Variables that contain more varied data, such as names and places, should be defined as strings.

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Data Transfer Rate - Tech Terms

Data Transfer Rate Definition (Wikipedia Now): The data transfer rate is commonly used to measure how fast data is transferred from one location to another. For example, a hard drive may have a maximum data transfer rate of 480 Mbps, while your ISP may offer an Internet connection with a maximum data transfer rate of only 1.5 Mbps.

Data transfer rates are typically measured in bits per second (bps) as opposed to bytes per second, which can be understandably confusing. Because there are eight bits in a byte, a sustained data transfer rate of 80 Mbps is only transferring 10MB per second. While this is confusing for consumers, Internet service providers must enjoy measuring data transfer rates in bps since it makes their Internet access speeds sound 8x faster than they really are.

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Data - Tech Terms

Data Definition (Wikipedia Now): Computer data is information processed or stored by a computer. This information may be in the form of text documents, images, audio clips, software programs, or other types of data. Computer data may be processed by the computer's CPU and is stored in files and folders on the computer's hard disk.

At its most rudimentary level, computer data is a bunch of ones and zeros, known as binary data. Because all computer data is in binary format, it can be created, processed, saved, and stored digitally. This allows data to be transferred from one computer to another using a network connection or various media devices. It also does not deteriorate over time or lose quality after being used multiple times.

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CLOB - Tech Terms

CLOB Definition (Wikipedia Now): Stands for "Character Large Object." A CLOB is a data type used by various database management systems, including Oracle and DB2. It stores large amounts of characterdata, up to 4 GB in size. The CLOB data type is similar to a BLOB, but includes character encoding, which defines a character set and the way each character is represented. BLOB data, on the other hand, consists of unformatted binary data.

Common data types used for storing character data include char, varchar, and text. Some database management systems also support additional text data types such as tinytext, mediumtext, and longtext. If the standard character data types are not large enough for a certain database field, the CLOB data type may be used. Since CLOB data may be very large, some database management systems do not store the text directly in the table. Instead, the CLOB field serves as an address, which references the location of the data.

CLOBs provide a way to store unusually large amounts of text, such as an entire book or publication. However, some database programs cannot run certain text operations on CLOB fields, such SQL commands with the "LIKE" condition. Therefore, it is often better to use other character data types for smaller text values.

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Byte - Tech Terms

Byte Definition (Wikipedia Now): A byte is a unit of measurement used to measure data. One byte contains eight binary bits or a series of eight zeros and ones. Therefore, each byte can be used to represent 2^8 or 256 different values.

The byte was originally developed to store a single character since 256 values are sufficient to represent all standard lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols. However, since some languages have more than 256 characters, modern character encoding standards, such as UTF-16, use two bytes, or 16 bits for each character.

While the byte was originally designed to measure character data, it is now the fundamental unit of measurement for all data storage. For example, a kilobyte contains 2^10 or 1,024 bytes. A megabyte contains 1,024 x 1,024, or 1,048,576 bytes. Since bytes are so small, they are most often used to measure specific data within a file, such as pixels or characters. Even the smallest files are typically measured in kilobytes, while data storage limits are often measured in gigabytes or terabytes.

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BPS - Tech Terms

BPS Definition (Wikipedia Now): Stands for "Bits Per Second." Bps is a standard way to measure data transfer rates, such as network connection and Internet download speeds.

In the early days of the Internet, data transfer speeds were measured in bps. As Internet connection speeds increased, a variation of bps – Kbps (1,000 bps) – became more common. Today, Internet connections speeds are often measured in Mbps (1,000,000 bps). Some networks support speeds over 1,000 Mbps and are measured in Gbps.

It is important to abbreviate bits per second as "bps" (with a lowercase "b"). The lowercase "b" signifies bits rather than bytes. Since a byte is eight bits, 100 Bps is equal to 800 bps. Variations of Bps, such as megabytes per second or gigabytes per second are typically abbreviated with a slash, such as MB/s or GB/s. These measurements are commonly used to define the transfer speeds of internal components, such as HDDs and SSDs.

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Blob - Tech Terms

Blob Definition (Wikipedia Now): If you're like me, you picture a blob as an enigmatic green object that lacks a defined shape or size. In the computer world, however, blobs are a bit easier to define. The term "blob" actually stands for "Binary Large Object" and is used for storing information in databases.

A blob is a data type that can store binary data. This is different than most other data types used in databases, such as integers, floating point numbers, characters, and strings, which store letters and numbers. Since blobs can store binary data, they can be used to store images or other multimedia files. For example, a photo album could be stored in a database using a blob data type for the images, and a string data type for the captions.

Because blobs are used to store objects such as images, audio files, and video clips, they often require significantly more space than other data types. The amount of data a blob can store varies depending on the database type, but some databases allow blob sizes of several gigabytes. Now that is a big blob!

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Bitrate - Tech Terms

Bitrate Definition (Wikipedia Now): Bitrate as the name implies, describes the rate at which bits are transferred from one location to another. In other words, it measures how much data is transmitted in a given amount of time. Bitrate is commonly measured in bits per second (bps), kilobits per second (Kbps), or megabits per second (Mbps). For example, a DSL connection may be able to download data at 768 kbps, while a Firewire 800 connection can transfer data up to 800 Mbps.

Bitrate can also describe the quality of an audio or video file. For example, an MP3audio file that is compressed at 192 Kbps will have a greater dynamic range and may sound slightly more clear than the same audio file compressed at 128 Kbps. This is because more bits are used to represent the audio data for each second of playback. Similarly, a video file that is compressed at 3000 Kbps will look better than the same file compressed at 1000 Kbps. Just like the quality of an image is measured in resolution, the quality of an audio or video file is measured by the bitrate.

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Bit - Tech Terms

Bit Definition (Wikipedia Now): A bit (short for "binary digit") is the smallest unit of measurement used to quantify computer data. It contains a single binary value of 0 or 1.

While a single bit can define a boolean value of True (1) or False (0), an individual bit has little other use. Therefore, in computer storage, bits are often grouped together in 8-bit clusters called bytes. Since a byte contains eight bits that each have two possible values, a single byte may have 28 or 256 different values.

The terms "bits" and "bytes" are often confused and are even used interchangeably since they sound similar and are both abbreviated with the letter "B." However, when written correctly, bits are abbreviated with a lowercase "b," while bytes are abbreviated with a capital "B." It is important not to confuse these two terms, since any measurement in bytes contains eight times as many bits. For example, a small text filethat is 4 KB in size contains 4,000 bytes, or 32,000 bits.

Generally, files, storage devices, and storage capacity are measured in bytes, while data transfer rates are measured in bits. For instance, an SSD may have a storage capacity of 240 GB, while a download may transfer at 10 Mbps. Additionally, bits are also used to describe processor architecture, such as a 32-bit or 64-bit processor.

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Baud - What is Baud

Baud Definition (Wikipedia Now) : Baud, or baud rate, is used to describe the maximum oscillation rate of an electronic signal. For example, if a signal changes (or could change) 1200 times in one second, it would be measured at 1200 baud. While the term was originally used to measure the rate of electronic pulses, it has also become a way to measure data transmission speeds of dial-up modems.

If a modem transfers a single bit per electronic pulse, one baud would be equal to one bit per second (bps). However, most modems transfer multiple bits per signal transition. For example, a 28.8 Kbps modem may send nine bits per second. Therefore, it would only require a baud rate of 2100 (28,800 / 9). 56K modems often use a baud rate of 8000. This means they send seven bits per signal transition, since 7 x 8000 = 56,000.

Modems typically select the most efficient baud rate automatically (sometimes called the "autobaud" setting). However, many dial-up modems allow you to override the default baud setting and manually enter the baud rate using a software interface. This can be useful if a dial-up ISP requires a specific baud rate for communication. However, reducing the baud rate of a modem may also reduce the maximum data transmission rate.

Baud rates above 8000 are not very reliable on analog telephone lines, which is why most modems do not offer higher baud settings. Additionally, at such a high baud rate, only seven bits can be sent consistently with each pulse, which is why dial-up modem speeds maxed out at 56 Kbps many years ago. Fortunately, newer technologies such as DSL and cable modems offer much faster data transfer rates. Since DSL and cable modems communicate over digital lines, baud rate is irrelevant to these devices.

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Bandwidth - What is Bandwidth

Bandwidth Definition (Wikipedia Now) : Bandwidth describes the maximum data transfer rate of a network or Internetconnection. It measures how much data can be sent over a specific connection in a given amount of time. For example, a gigabit Ethernet connection has a bandwidth of 1,000 Mbps, (125 megabytes per second). An Internet connection via cable modem may provide 25 Mbps of bandwidth.

While bandwidth is used to describe network speeds, it does not measure how fast bitsof data move from one location to another. Since data packets travel over electronic or fiber optic cables, the speed of each bit transferred is negligible. Instead, bandwidth measures how much data can flow through a specific connection at one time.

When visualizing bandwidth, it may help to think of a network connection as a tube and each bit of data as a grain of sand. If you pour a large amount of sand into a skinny tube, it will take a long time for the sand to flow through it. If you pour the same amount of sand through a wide tube, the sand will finish flowing through the tube much faster. Similarly, a download will finish much faster when you have a high-bandwidth connection rather than a low-bandwidth connection.

Data often flows over multiple network connections, which means the connection with the smallest bandwidth acts as a bottleneck. Generally, the Internet backbone and connections between servers have the most bandwidth, so they rarely serve as bottlenecks. Instead, the most common Internet bottleneck is your connection to your ISP.

NOTE: Bandwidth also refers to a range of frequencies used to transmit a signal. This type of bandwidth is measured in hertz and is often referenced in signal processing applications.

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APFS - What is APFS

APFS Definition (Wikipedia Now) : Stands for "Apple File System." APFS is a file system developed by Apple specifically for flash memory storage devices. It was released with iOS 10.3 in March, 2017 and for macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) in September, 2017.

The Apple File System is the successor to Apple's previous file system HFS+, which has been used for decades in Apple products. APFS is designed to provide a more efficient means of storing and accessing files on flash storage devices, such as smartphone and SSDs. It supports over 9 quintillion files on a single storage device, compared to the roughly 4.3 billion files supported by HFS+. APFS natively supports full disk encryption, while HFS+ does not.

APFS provides a number of significant performance improvements over HFS+. It requires less memory overhead and has lower latency than HFS+. This means reading and writing files is faster, speeding up common operations such as opening documentsand browsing large numbers of files. Copying is much more efficient since file clones are created by simply adding a pointer to the original file rather than duplicating the file. This creates copies instantly without requiring additional disk space. When a copied file is modified, the updates are recorded as "deltas" or changes to the file.

Like its predecessor, the Apple File System supports TRIM to improve the lifespan of SSDs. It also adds "Space Sharing," which allows multiple APFS volumes to share the same free space on a physical storage device, or "container." This allows APFS-formatted volumes to grow (or shrink) as needed without repartitioning. Instead of journaling (implemented by HFS+), APFS tracks changes using a copy-on-write metadatascheme to record changes to the file system. This prevents file corruption caused by unexpected crashes and reduces the overhead of journaling.

NOTE: APFS is automatically used in Macs with flash memory drives running macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later. Updating a flash-based Mac to High Sierra will automatically update the file system from HFS+ to APFS. Macs with HDDs or Fusion Drives will not be updated to APFS.

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