What is Data Transfer?

What is Data Transfer?

Data transfer is a process where information is transferred from one form of computer media to another.

Internet Data

Whenever someone visits a web site, data is sent from the web servers to their computer. This data can be composed of web pages, images, movies, sound files, programs, compressed files, or anything else on a site that can be viewed or downloaded by visitors. When all this requested data is added up, you have a total data transfer.

Download

Download refers to the action of transferring data from a remote computer to your local machine. It used to refer solely to dialing up a BBS and getting some files from their download area. Nowadays, most downloading occurs over the Internet through browsers.

Upload

Upload, the act of transferring data from your computer to a remote system. This is most commonly referred to when sending files to a remote BBS (Bulletin Board System).

Transfer Rate

     Speed measures how much data can be transferred in one second to your PC. It is rated in KiloBits per second, short Kbps. This can cause some confusion since the size of files is measured in Kilo Bytes. And when you download a web page or a file, your browser often indicates not KiloBits per second, Kbps (note the small letter "b"), but KBps, Kilo Bytes per second (note the capital letter "B"). To get a better feel for this, you need to understand that one Byte equals 8 Bits.

Example:

     Assume you want to download some freeware from the Internet. The program file is 6 Mega Bytes. First, let's translate that into Kilo Bits so that we can compare apples to apples. 1 Mega Byte is 1024 Kilo Byte. Therefore the file you want to download is 6144 Kilo Bytes big.

1 Mega Byte = 1024 Kilo Byte
6 Mega Bytes = 6144 Kilo Bytes (6 * 1024)

     But since we want to measure in KiloBits, we still need to multiply this number by 8, since one Byte is 8 Bits.

6144 Kilo Bytes = 49152 Kilo Bit (6144 * 8)

     Now that we figured that out, we can calculate how long it would take to download the file. Let's say your transfer speed is 50 Kilo Bits per second (Kbps). We divide 49152 Kilo Bits by 50 Kilo Bits and get 983.

49152 KiloBits (File Size) / 50 KiloBits per second (Transfer Speed) = 983 seconds

This means it takes 983 seconds to transfer that file. In minutes, that would be 16.38.

983 seconds / 60 (60 seconds in a minute) = 16.38

     In reality, it might take a little bit longer, since the data is not being transformed in one continuous stream but in little packets. The file is chopped up into small pieces, which are wrapped into packets, which are then individually sent one by one. The wrapper takes a few extra bits so that the information transferred is actually the total file size plus a few bytes extra for the packets.

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