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Bits are transmitted one at a time in serial transmission, and by a multiple number of bits in parallel transmission. A bitwise operation optionally processes bits one at a time. Data transfer rates are usually measured in decimal SI multiples of the unit bit per second (bit/s), such as kbit/s. In some cases, your computer will ship with a 64-bit processor but you'll have a 32-bit version of Windows loaded at the factory. It doesn't matter if your processor supports 64-bit computing; if the operating system supports 32-bits only, you cannot run a 64-bit program. For example, Microsoft Office supports both 64- and 32-bit installers. To make your wargames miniatures even more unique, BitzStore offers a selection of bits and spare parts alternative to the Warhammer 40,000 bitz, textured bases and the modeling tools necessary for your conversions. With more than thousands of Warhammer bitz references and regular bits restocking, BitzStore is your bitzbox.

Purpose

Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) is used by programmers and system administrators to download files from or upload files to HTTP web servers and SMB file shares. BITS will take the cost of the transfer into consideration, as well as the network usage so that the user's foreground work has as little impact as possible. BITS also handles network interuptions, pausing and automatically resuming transfers, even after a reboot. BITS includes PowerShell cmdlets for creating and managing transfers as well as the BitsAdmin command-line utility.

Note

BITS can be used by Windows to download updates to your local system. If you are an end-user searching for ways to troubleshoot your BITS installation, see Fix Windows Update Issues.

Where applicable

Use BITS for applications that need to:

• Download from or upload files to an HTTP or REST web server or SMB file server.
• Automatically resume file transfers after network disconnects and computer restarts.
• Preserve the responsiveness of other network applications.
• Be mindful of the network cost on e.g. roaming networks
• Optionally work with BranchCache to optimize wide area network (WAN) traffic

Developer audience

BITS is a COM interface designed for C and C++ developers that can also be used by .NET developers. UWP developers should use the Windows.Networking.BackgroundTransfer API and not the BITS API.

BITS versions

For complete version history and information on earlier operating system, see What's New.

In this section

Additional resources

The following are additional resources.

A bit is a binary digit, the smallest increment of data ona computer. A bit can hold only one of two values: 0 or 1, correspondingto the electrical values of off or on, respectively.

Because bits are so small, you rarely work with information one bit ata time. Bits are usually assembled into a group of eight to form abyte. A byte contains enough information to store asingle ASCII character, like 'h'.

A kilobyte (KB) is 1,024 bytes, not one thousand bytes as might beexpected, because computers use binary (base two) math,instead of a decimal (base ten) system.

Computer storage and memory is often measured in megabytes(MB) and gigabytes (GB). A medium-sized novel contains about 1 MB ofinformation. 1 MB is 1,024 kilobytes, or 1,048,576 (1024x1024) bytes,not one million bytes.

Similarly, one 1 GB is 1,024 MB, or 1,073,741,824 (1024x1024x1024)bytes. A terabyte (TB) is 1,024 GB; 1 TB is about the same amount ofinformation as all of the books in a large library, or roughly 1,610CDs worth of data. A petabyte (PB) is 1,024 TB. 1 PB of data, ifwritten on DVDs, would create roughly 223,100 DVDs, i.e., a stack about878 feet tall, or a stack of CDs a mile high. Indiana University isnow building storage systems capable of holding petabytes of data. Anexabyte (EB) is 1,024 PB. A zettabyte (ZB) is 1,024 EB. Finally, ayottabyte (YB) is 1,024 ZB.

Many hard drive manufacturers use a decimal number system to defineamounts of storage space. As a result, 1 MB is defined as one millionbytes, 1 GB is defined as one billion bytes, and so on. Since yourcomputer uses a binary system as mentioned above, you may notice adiscrepancy between your hard drive's published capacity and thecapacity acknowledged by your computer. For example, a hard drivethat is said to contain 10 GB of storage space using a decimal systemis actually capable of storing 10,000,000,000 bytes. However, in abinary system, 10 GB is 10,737,418,240 bytes. As a result, instead ofacknowledging 10 GB, your computer will acknowledge 9.31 GB. This is not a malfunction but a matter of differentdefinitions.

We count in base 10 by powers of 10:

Computers count by base 2:

So in computer jargon, the following units are used:

Bitsbox.com/code

Note: The names and abbreviations for numbers ofbytes are easily confused with the notations for bits. Theabbreviations for numbers of bits use a lower-case 'b' instead of anupper-case 'B'. Since one byte is made up of eight bits, thisdifference can be significant. For example, if a broadband Internetconnection is advertised with a download speed of3.0 Mbps, its speed is 3.0 megabitsper second, or 0.375 megabytes per second (whichwould be abbreviated as 0.375 MBps). Bits and bit rates(bits over time, as in bits per second [bps]) are most commonly usedto describe connection speeds, so pay particular attention whencomparing Internet connection providers and services.

Bit Skins

This document was developed with support from National Science Foundation (NSF) grants 1053575 and 1548562. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in thismaterial are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect theviews of the NSF.