[CentOS] Octet (was: IP6 Anyone?)

--On Saturday, February 26, 2011 9:04 PM +0000 Always Learning 
<centos at g7.u22.net> wrote:

> Are you sure 'octets' is correct?

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Octet_%28computing%29>

Those of us who've used older mainframes (such as the PDP-10) remember 
"byte" being a synonym for "bit field" and a byte could be any number of 
bits, typically from 1 to 36 (on a 36-bit-wide machine). 7-bit and 9-bit 
bytes were quite common on such machines.

The PDP-11 and microcomputers used 8-bit bytes, and their popularity meant 
most people using computers at home or in small businesses assumed that 
that was the only size a byte could be.