Talk:Data signaling rate

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[edit] Merging

According to this and a few other sources: "The bit rate is not to be confused with the data signaling rate which measures the rate of signal elements being transmitted."   —Teknic^T-M-C 13:04, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

So they are referring to the difference between the actual content being sent and the wrappers and filler required to send it? Both are referred to by the term "bit rate", so this should at least be clarified, and probably merged into bit rate, since they are such similar ideas. Likewise for data transfer rate. - Omegatron 13:40, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but I think this article is just wrong. The signaling rate references a lower level than bits and has nothing to do with wrappers or headers. With a modem, for example, each "signal" can be one of a number of possible "conditions". If there are four possible conditions, then each signal can transmit two bits of information (00, 01, 10, or 11), so in this example the bit rate would be twice the signaling rate. Check out baud for more info. The article could use a rewrite, but I'm not familiar enough with these waters to just dive in. Regarding data transfer rate, I mentioned this on the talk page, but "transfer rate" can refer to the rate of anything, like packets/sec or characters/sec, not just bits, so it should not be merged with bit rate either. I agree that these three terms may be similar, but I can't imagine any possible benefit in merging them, or any other "similar" topics for that matter.   —Teknic^T-M-C 17:32, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Bits per second seems to be just as nebulous a concept. "Note that because of advancing technology, the actual bitrates used by some of the compared-to devices is significantly higher." "Bits per second" can refer to a data rate, a compressed data rate, a compressed data rate with extra things like bit stuffing added, etc.

These stubs about similar ideas should be merged into one article to clarify the differences between them. My opinion. - Omegatron 18:23, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Teknic, I think your understanding is correct -- the lower-level "signaling rate" you mention is discussed in the symbol rate article; the higher-level "transfer rate" you mention is discussed at goodput. However, it seems clear to me that the definitions currently on this "data signaling rate" describe exactly the same thing as the "raw bitrate" in the bitrate article -- the theoretical maximum rate (in bits per second) resulting from the symbol rate times the maximum number of bits per symbol. Well, except for definition 5, which describes symbol rate alone. I agree with Omegatron that articles about very similar ideas should be merged, so I'm slapping the merge tag on the articles "data signaling rate" and "bitrate". --75.41.34.231 03:18, 18 May 2007 (UTC)