Information that travels over a computer network or other type of telecommunications network usually comes in packets. Packets are smaller, bite-sized pieces of a larger block of information. While telecommunications technology is generally reliable and seamless from the end user’s perspective, this is only because the computer does the dirty work. It constantly scans packets for fraudulent and corrupted data, discarding it when found. An intermittent error is a sequence of corrupted data, measured as the length between and including the first and last error signals.
Woman doing handstand with a computer
For example, imagine sending a packet containing all the letters of the alphabet, A through Z. If the recipient’s computer “opens” the packet and finds that the first letter of the sequence is “Q” and the last letter of the sequence is “R”, it is an intermittent error. The data “explosion” in the packet is corrupted.
Although in the example the first and last letters are defined as corrupted, this does not mean that all letters in the packet are corrupted. Imagine that all the other letters are as they should be; only position one, “A” and position 26, “Z”, were damaged. The number of correct bits of information between the damaged ends is called the guard band. In this case, the protection stripe would be 24, since there are 24 correct letters separating the two damaged ones.
Measuring the length of a burst error is simple. It is defined as the number of individual bits that separate the first occurrence of the error from the last, including leading and trailing bad bits. In the example above, the burst error length would be 26.
The causes of a burst error can vary widely. It is not always possible to measure them accurately. In general, this corruption can occur through various sources, including signal degradation, packet loss, other types of network failure, or the computer failing to send. On the web, as in the real world, sometimes things go wrong. Fortunately, most forms of networking provide built-in error checking mechanisms, allowing a receiving computer to compare the actual data received with a printout of the data that was sent, allowing it to recognize if something went wrong. in the path.
