[tor-relays] Proper bandwidth units [was: Exit nodes on Gandi]

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Mon Nov 25 20:46:02 UTC 2013


On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 1:29 PM, Gordon Morehouse <gordon at morehouse.me> wrote:
>>>>> Why not just accept KB/sec, KiB/sec, GB/mo, GiB/mo in the
>>>> [1] https://bugs.torproject.org/9214
>> We now support gbits (1<<27) and gbytes (1<<30) in the torrc file,
>> but we do not support "gib". Or I think more correctly, we say
>> gbytes for what you want us to call gibs, and if you want to say a
>> billion bytes, you need to type all the zeros.
>
> I learned about the 'gib, kib' etc in wikipedia a while back - it'd be
> best if the config file were extremely liberal in accepting what
> people type, IMO.

No. This kind of lazy acceptance is exactly why rockets crash,
and rockets crashing are why one must use proper terms.
'gib, kib' are not cased correctly, thus people have no idea what
you explicitly mean. They might presume your lazy casing means
'Gib, KiB' but then your rocket might crash. Reference and
enforcement is the proper cure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

The little table in the upper right covers the decimal and binary
prefixes and their long names. It should be documented as
such and nothing else should be accepted.

As far as units of bit and byte...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541-2002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_80000-13
With the more international community seemingly lately moving
the abbreviation for a bit from 'b' to 'bit'. And defining octet 'o' as
the grouping of eight bits (perhaps still leaving the byte somewhat
undecided as to its width in bits, and conflicting in abbreviation 'B'
with the older and more cross-disciplined Bel.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units


More information about the tor-relays mailing list