Difference between revisions of "Octet"
From Computer History Wiki
(Fairly complete) |
(More NCP fixups, minor clarifications while I'm here) |
||
| (One intermediate revision by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| − | An '''octet''' is an 8-[[bit]] unit of data. Although the term [[byte]] is now basically a synonym, a separate term was needed in the early days of work on the [[TCP/IP]] [[protocol suite]], because in the earlier [[Network Control | + | An '''octet''' is an 8-[[bit]] unit of data. Although the term [[byte]] is now basically a synonym, a separate term was needed in the early days of work on the [[TCP/IP]] [[protocol suite]], because in the earlier [[Network Control Protocol|NCP]] protocol suite of the [[ARPANET]], 'bytes' of variable length were supported. (That was as a result of the prevalence of machines such as [[PDP-10]], a 36-bit [[word]] machine whose [[instruction set architecture|ISA]] directly supported variable-length bytes.) |
[[Category: Basics]] | [[Category: Basics]] | ||
Latest revision as of 14:10, 29 June 2022
An octet is an 8-bit unit of data. Although the term byte is now basically a synonym, a separate term was needed in the early days of work on the TCP/IP protocol suite, because in the earlier NCP protocol suite of the ARPANET, 'bytes' of variable length were supported. (That was as a result of the prevalence of machines such as PDP-10, a 36-bit word machine whose ISA directly supported variable-length bytes.)
