Errored second: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:02, 29 January 2024

Revision as of 18:12, 1 October 2024

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In [[telecommunications]] and [[data communication]] systems, an '''errored second''' is an interval of a [[second]] during which any error whatsoever has occurred, regardless of whether that error was a single bit error or a complete loss of communication for that entire second. The type of error is not important for the purpose of counting errored seconds.

In communication systems with very low uncorrected [[bit error rate]]s, such as modern [[fiber -optic transmission system]]s, or systems with higher low-level error rates that are corrected using large amounts of [[forward error correction]], errored seconds are often a better measure of the effective user-visible error rate than the raw bit error rate.

For many modern packet-switched communication systems, even a single uncorrected bit error is enough to cause the loss of a [[data packet]] by causing its [[CRC check]] to fail; whether that packet loss was caused by a single bit error or a hundred-bit-long [[error burst]] is irrelevant.