Data Communication Questions:

Now this is an interesting question, I think a lot of marketing people choose whichever description they think will sound the best to sell a device!!

I was taught that baud rate is bits per second, now the bits might contain parity bits start and stop bits etc... So an 8 bit word might be 10 or more bits long.

Some people talk about bytes per second which should be different from Baud rate... But it is all very confusing, especially if the marketing people see a sales advantage in calling bytes per second baud rate etc...

Difference between a Local Area Network (LAN) and a Wide Area Network (WAN) is distance!!

I will be interested to hear what others say...

John.

Stapling machine Electroman!

Yes the marketeers talk complet bo**ocks..

20Meg broadband...???? D'uh

20meg what? They use it to mean anything from file download size before you start paying extra ..to maximum speed in unspecified units, which you won't get anyhow, cost the kids have just come home from school and are on line to their mates or googling their homework. The Oldies in the USA are all playing online bridge, and that nice Mrs Zambessi is online buying a new Curry's brain, and there's a lizard in the modem.

....Oooh intercourse the penguin.

(appologies to Mony Python)

Bit rate: how many bits can be transmitted in a second.

Baud rate: how many times changes the status of the transfer line in a second (modulation speed)

For example: if your modem uses two carrier frequencies one will mean the "0", the other the "1". In this case bit rate will be the same az the Baud rate. If your modem uses four carrier frequencies, one change in line status will mean two bits:

f1: 00, f2: 01, f3: 10, f4: 11

So, the bit rate will be double of Baud rate, and so on: 8 frequencies=triple bit rate

The baud rate is the number of symbols per second, while one symbol is a unit, that can transfer one or more bits, according to the modulation type. So that the bitrate is the multiple of the baudrate depending upon number of bits in one symbol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baud