LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Michael Wardle <wardle@adacel.com.au>
  To  : Alan Kennington <akenning@topology.org>
        LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 13:18:37 +1000

how to write data units [Was: Re: Telstra Broadband & Multi-Users]

Alan Kennington wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 08:14:51PM +0930, John Edwards wrote:
> >
> > >I don't actually have any broadband at home, and cannot get ADSL in
> > >Prospect. We were going to get BigPond Cable, but then they brought in the
> > 3
> > >Gb cap. (actually, 2.86 Gb, because telstra say 1 Gb == 1,000 ^ 3, although
> > >the rest of the internet says 1 Gb == 1024 ^ 3)
> >
> > Actually, the rest of the Internet (where bytes are metered) tends to use
> > base 10 accounting. America (the sadly dominant user of the Internet)
> > couldn't care less, since they're mostly on unlimited usage systems.
> >
> [....]
> 
> Here's an interesting link on this subject:
> 
> http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
> 
> They suggest that we call the binary-harmonized versions of
> kilobyte etc.:
> 
> kibibyte         = 1024 bytes
> mebibyte         = (1024)^2 bytes
> gibibyte         = (1024)^3 bytes
> 
> and so forth.

They also suggest standardized symbols/abbreviations for these units:
byte		=	B
kibibyte	=	KiB
mebibyte	=	MiB
gibibyte	=	GiB
...		=	...

You will notice that these are basically SI ("metric") prefixes, with
an "i" added to signify binary.  They also seem to have chosen an
uppercase K, rather than a lowercase k (SI 10^3 is "k") to
maintain uniformity with the other binary prefixes.  This is the
standard of the IEC, supported by IEEE and CIPM.

As well as this, a good practise is to abbreviate bit as "b", and
byte as "B" (which also incidentally is the SI symbol for "Bel",
but these are unlikely to be confused), so 3 000 000 000 bytes would
best be written 3 GB, rather than 3 Gb (altho I don't know if
Telstra is aware of this!).


By now, Alan, you will have noticed that I also prefer US English! :-)


Cheers.


--
MICHAEL WARDLE
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