Terabit

What Does Terabit Mean?

A terabit is a measurement for 1 trillion bits or pieces of binary data. It represents a shift from the prefix “giga” or billion with the prefix “tera” or trillion. Terabits are often contrasted with terabytes, which is a term for 1 trillion bytes, each of which is made up of eight individual bits.

Advertisements

Techopedia Explains Terabit

In general, terabits and terabytes are both commonly used in the measurement of new technology data handling processes and services as well as products. That is why there are various “terabit to terabyte conversion” tools available on the internet. To clarify the issue, engineers typically use the abbreviation Tb for terabit and the abbreviation TB for terabyte.

In consumer electronics, terabits may be used to measure flash drive capacity. Flash drives are now available with a terabit (1000 gigabits) of storage, or even a terabyte (8 terabits). Terabits per second is also a common measurement of bandwidth upload/download speeds, which is a recent development.

Advertisements

Related Terms

Latest Data Management Terms

Related Reading

Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…