| Exbibits per second (Eibit/s) | Zebioctets per second (Zio/s) |
|---|---|
| 1 Exbibit per second | 0.0001220703125 Zio/s |
| 2 Exbibits per second | 0.000244140625 Zio/s |
| 3 Exbibits per second | 0.0003662109375 Zio/s |
| 4 Exbibits per second | 0.00048828125 Zio/s |
| 5 Exbibits per second | 0.0006103515625 Zio/s |
| 10 Exbibits per second | 0.001220703125 Zio/s |
| 20 Exbibits per second | 0.00244140625 Zio/s |
| 25 Exbibits per second | 0.0030517578125 Zio/s |
| 50 Exbibits per second | 0.006103515625 Zio/s |
| 100 Exbibits per second | 0.01220703125 Zio/s |
| Reference | Exbibits per second (Eibit/s) | Zebioctets per second (Zio/s) |
|---|---|---|
| A dial-up modem | 4.85723 × 10-14 Eibit/s | 5.92923 × 10-18 Zio/s |
| Typical home broadband | 8.67362 × 10-11 Eibit/s | 1.05879 × 10-14 Zio/s |
| Gigabit Ethernet | 8.67362 × 10-10 Eibit/s | 1.05879 × 10-13 Zio/s |
| Streaming a 4K film | 2.1684 × 10-11 Eibit/s | 2.64698 × 10-15 Zio/s |
The exbibit per second is a unit of data transfer rate equal to two to the sixtieth power bits per second, which is 1,024 pebibits per second. Its symbol is Eibit/s. It is the binary counterpart of the exabit per second, and the two differ by 15.3 per cent.
That fifteen per cent is more than the margin most engineering work allows anywhere. A quantity stated in the wrong convention at this level is not slightly imprecise but plainly wrong, and no amount of context recovers the intended figure once it has been written ambiguously. This is the situation the IEC prefixes were introduced to prevent.
No physical link approaches this rate. The unit describes aggregates: the total instantaneous traffic of the whole internet is roughly an exabit per second, so a binary exbibit per second is fifteen per cent more than everything moving on every network on the planet at a given moment.
Where a binary figure of this size arises naturally is in address arithmetic rather than in transmission. Two to the sixtieth is a number that appears throughout the design of 64-bit systems, and any rate derived from filling or traversing such an address space in a fixed time is naturally binary. Those calculations are theoretical, but they are the reason the unit is defined rather than left unnamed.
In octets an exbibit per second is 144,115,188,075,855,872, or 128 pebioctets per second. That is more storage moved per second than the world manufactures in several years, which is a way of saying that no source and no destination for such a flow could exist.
For a converter the treatment is mechanical and must be exact. Eibit/s and Ebit/s differ by an eighth, and a tool that treats them as interchangeable has introduced an error larger than the difference between many neighbouring units. The lowercase i is not decoration.
One exbibit per second equals 1,024 pebibits per second, 144,115,188,075,855,872 octets per second, or about 1.153 exabits per second.
The zebioctet per second is a unit of data transfer rate equal to 1,024 exbioctets per second, or two to the seventieth power octets per second. Its symbol is Zio/s. It is the binary counterpart of the zettaoctet per second, and the two differ by 18.1 per cent.
A link running at this rate would transfer everything humanity has ever stored several times over in a single second. That is the plainest way to describe how far it lies beyond anything that exists, is planned, or has been seriously proposed. The unit is a name for a quantity, not a description of a thing.
It is worth being precise about why such names are still defined. A measurement system is a set of rules, and the value of a rule is that it applies without exception. The moment a system says that certain prefix-and-unit combinations are legal and others are not, every user must carry a table instead of a rule, and different users will carry different tables. Complete definition is cheaper and safer.
The physical obstacles are not merely large but qualitative. At a zebioctet per second, the energy needed to switch the required number of states, even at the thermodynamic minimum, becomes a substantial power; the practical figure for real electronics is many orders of magnitude above that; and the number of parallel channels required exceeds anything that could be built and cooled. These are not engineering targets.
The 18.1 per cent gap from the decimal unit continues the pattern that runs through the whole binary series. Each step multiplies the discrepancy by 1.024, so a convention that was harmless at the kibioctet has become, by this point, a difference no reader could overlook. Making that visible is the purpose the IEC prefixes serve.
In practice, a converter meets this unit only in a complete table or in a document exploring theoretical limits. Handling it correctly costs nothing and demonstrates that the tool applies its rules uniformly, which is the property that makes its ordinary answers trustworthy.
One zebioctet per second equals 1,024 exbioctets per second, 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424 octets per second, or about 1.181 zettaoctets per second.