====== Bit time ======

Bit time is a quantity that can be useful for simplifying the calculation of file download times and [[network latency]]. Bit time for a given [[link]] is simply the time taken to transmit one bit. Some bit times for commonly encountered link capacities are given in the table below:

^ Link technology ^ Bandwidth ^ Bit Time ^
| telephone modem | 56 kbit/s | 17.86 μs = 17,857 ns |
| 2 Mbit [[ADSL]] broadband | 2 Mbit/s | 0.5 μs = 500 ns|
| 5 Mbit [[HFC]] broadband | 5 Mbit/s | 0.2 μs = 200 ns |
| [[WiFi]]     | 54 Mbit/s | 0.0185 μs = 18.5 ns  |
| [[Ethernet]] | 100 Mbit/s | 0.01 μs = 10 ns |
| Gigabit [[Ethernet]] | 1 Gbit/s | 0.001 μs = 1 ns |

Once you have bit times, you can perform all calculations in terms of the packet size in bits and convert to time only if required.  
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[[Glossary]] : [[glossary#A|A]] | [[glossary#B|B]] | [[glossary#C|C]] | [[glossary#D|D]] | [[glossary#E|E]] | [[glossary#F|F]] | [[glossary#G|G]] | [[glossary#H|H]] | [[glossary#I|I]] | [[glossary#J|J]] | [[glossary#K|K]] | [[glossary#L|L]] | [[glossary#M|M]] | [[glossary#N|N]] | [[glossary#O|P]] | [[glossary#Q|Q]] | [[glossary#R|R]] | [[glossary#S|S]] | [[glossary#T|T]] | [[glossary#U|U]] | [[glossary#V|V]] | [[glossary#W|W]] | [[glossary#X|X]] | [[glossary#Y|Y]] | [[glossary#Z|Z]]