[c-nsp] Bit, byte huh?

[Ziv Leyes]

One of the first things I've learnt is that bandwidth is measured in bits while memory/disk space/ file size are measured in bytes.
Since then I always had arguments with my colleagues, for example, when I worked at a very large ISP, the customer's links in bigger circuits were limited by traffic shaping the sub interfaces, so the guys that "taught" me how to do it told me to set it like this, for example of a 4/2Mb link.

interface atm0/1.30
bandwidth 4096 (this was only for the MRTG)
rate-limit input 4096000 blah blah blah...
rate-limit output 2048000 blah blah...


And I always told them that we sell BITS, not bytes, but the "marketing" convention got the customers used to talk in bytes, perhaps IE browser is guilty because when a customer measures his bandwidth it checks at how many BYTES per second they download a file from a website. Therefore, when you sell 4Mb you need to give them 1x1024 bandwidth units, 1M is 1024, 2M is 2048, and so on.
I gave up on this battle, I can't change the world! But I still believe that 1M is one million BITS!

Ziv


-----Original Message-----
From: cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net [mailto:cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Dracul
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 4:24 AM
To: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: [c-nsp] Bit, byte huh?

Hi, I was wondering what unit of bandwidth measurement does Internet
Bandwidth Providers usually use?  Megabits or Megabytes?
in the usual, cisco router and switches, how do we measure bandwidth? by bit
or by byte? It is a bit confusing as 1 byte = 8bits right?
I'm afraid some of my calculations might be off when measuring bandwidth in
routers and switches. Thanks!

regards,
chris
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