Many believe that a byte is by definition, an eight-bit data unit. Technically, this definition isn’t correct. A byte is a data unit with an unspecified number of bits. Indeed, almost every hardware architecture nowadays uses eight-bit bytes. However, 20 and 30 years ago, machines that had 6-bit bytes, 11-bit bytes, and other weird numbers, weren’t exceptional. For this reason, communication protocols and other standards (e.g., CORBA) use the term octet ? rather than byte ? to refer to a data unit that occupies exactly eight bits. For example, an IP address consists of four octets.


Inside Michigan’s Clean Energy Revolution
Democratic state legislators in Michigan continue to discuss and debate clean energy legislation in the hopes of establishing a comprehensive clean energy strategy for the