Octet (computing)
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In computing, an octet is a grouping of eight bits.
In France and Romania, the word octet means byte; A Megabyte (MB) is called a Megaoctet in both France and in Romania.
Octet, with the only exception noted below, always refers to an entity having exactly eight bits. As such, it is often used where the term byte might be ambiguous. For that reason, computer networking standards almost exclusively use octet.
[edit] Exception
A group of three bits is also sometimes called an octet, as it can represent eight possible values. It is used this way, for instance, for the group of basic permission bits (read, write, execute) of many filesystems for Unix-like platforms.
[edit] Origin
The word octet comes from the Latin and Greek numerical prefix, Octo, meaning eight.
