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Bits or Bytes?

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  • Telecoms - articles

18-05-2021

 

Does your lawyer know the difference between bits and bytes? If not, they are probably not a technology lawyer.

So, what is the difference, or are they the same thing?

Most definitely not.

If your technology lawyer knows their stuff, they would know that bits are used to measure speed while bytes are used to measure size. If you know your download speed (bits) and the size of the file you are downloading (bytes), you can work out how long it would take you to download that file.

For example: if you wish to download a podcast and it happens to be 50 megabytes in size, and you have a 50 megabit per second fibre line, it should take you around 1 second to download it - right? Wrong – it will take you 8 seconds, unless Eskom implements loadshedding and your Wi-Fi disconnects.

Everyone, especially technology lawyers, should know that a byte is 8 times larger than a bit. They should also know that megabits are abbreviated to Mb, and megabytes are abbreviated to MB.

If not, they probably still live in the dark ages.

 

 

 

Tyron Fourie, Managing Partner
Grant Williams, Partner

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