terabits

Terabit is a unit of information equal to 1,000,000,000,000 bits (10^12). It is most commonly used to describe data transfer rates rather than stored data. The standard symbol for a terabit is Tb, and data rates are frequently expressed as terabits per second (Tbps).

One terabit equals 10^12 bits. Since one byte consists of eight bits, 1 terabit equals 125,000,000,000 bytes, or 125 gigabytes in decimal terms. In terms of smaller data-rate units, 1 terabit per second equals 1,000 gigabits per second (Gbps).

In binary contexts, the corresponding unit is the tebibit, which represents 2^40 bits (approximately 1.099 trillion bits). The tebibit is used to avoid ambiguity in discussions that rely on powers of two, such as some computer memory specifications, though terabits are more common in networking.

Applications and usage: Terabits are chiefly used to quantify high-capacity network bandwidth and backbone transmission rates, including core Internet backbones, long-haul fiber links, and data-center interconnects. They provide a convenient scale for describing multi-terabit-per-second systems under development or deployment. For storage and aggregate data volumes, conversions to bytes or gigabytes are typically used to avoid confusion with data rates.

See also: Bit, Byte, Gigabit, Terabit per second, Data rate, Information storage.