Info Tech Guide

bps Stands for "Bits Per Second." (The "b" is lowercase because it stands for bits, not bytes.) Bits per second is the standard way of measuring how fast data moves across a network or phone system. It is Measure of the rate of digital data transmission (such as through modems), it represents the average number of bits flowing in one direction in a wire, cable, or channel, in one second.

In data communications, bits per second (abbreviated bps or bit/sec) is a common measure of data speed for computer modems and transmission carriers. As the term implies, the speed in bps is equal to the number of bits transmitted or received each second.

Computer modems for twisted pair telephone lines usually operate at 57.6 Kbps or, with Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service, at 512 Kbps or faster. So-called "cable modems," designed for use with TV cable networks, can operate at more than 1.5 Mbps. Fiber optic modems can send and receive data at many Mbps

The bandwidth of a signal depends on the speed in bps. With some exceptions, the higher the bps number, the greater is the nominal signal bandwidth. (Speed and bandwidth are, however, not the same thing.) Bandwidth is measured in standard frequency units of kHz or MHz.

Data speed used to be specified in terms of baud, which is a measure of the number of times a digital signal changes state in one second. Baud, sometimes called the "baud rate," is almost always a lower figure than bps for a given digital signal because some signal modulation techniques allow more than one data bit to be transmitted per change state.