Measuring throughput

I have been looking through the defaults file and something doesn't  
sit quite right with me.

graph   ifInOctets
     color       =   dark-green
     draw-as     =   AREA
     legend      =   "Average bits in"
     y-axis      =   "bits per second"
     units       =   "bits/sec"
     scale       =   8,*
     bytes       =   true

graph   ifOutOctets
     color       =   blue
     legend      =   "Average bits out"
     y-axis      =   "bits per second"
     units       =   "bits/sec"
     scale       =   8,*
     bytes       =   true

what I'm not sure I understand it bytes = true.

 From http://cricket.sourceforge.net/support/doc/reference.html we get

bytes
     Default value: none

     If this is set to true, then the conversion to SI units will use  
powers of 2 instead of powers of 10. For instance, if a router is  
reporting that it's moving 1048576 bits per second through a  
particular interface, and "bytes" is set to 1 (or "true") then the  
value will be reported in the HTML summary as 1 Mbit/sec. Without the  
bytes tag, the value would be reported at 1.04 Mbit/sec, which is  
slightly misleading. When measuring very large numbers of bytes, the  
difference can be significant (4.9% in the case of Mega sized  
measurements, 7.3% in the case of Giga sized measurements). This is  
the major cause of discrepancies between Cricket and some commercial  
tools, so make sure it's set appropriately.

     The numbers on the vertical axis of a graph are scaled by powers  
of 2 if the bytes tag is set to true for any of the datasources on  
the graph.

However when I look else where on the net.  It's very clear that  
network traffic is measure in base 10.  For example,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_network_throughput

Nomenclature

The throughput of communications links is measured in bits per second  
(bit/s), kilobits per second (kbit/s), megabits per second (Mbit/s)  
and Gigabits per second (Gbit/s). In this application, kilo, mega and  
giga are the standard S.I. prefixes indicating multiplication by  
1,000 (kilo), 1,000,000 (mega), and 1,000,000,000 (giga).

File sizes are typically measured in bytes — kilobytes, megabytes,  
and gigabytes being usual, where a byte is eight bits. In modern  
textbooks one kilobyte is defined as 1,000 byte, one Megabyte as  
1,000,000 byte, etc, in accordance with the 1998 International  
Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard. However, when operational  
systems measure file size, the old computer science definition is  
still used, where 1 kilobyte is defined as 1,024 (2 raised to the  
power 10), which should be denoted 1kibibyte according to IEC  
terminology. Similarly, a file size of 1 megabyte is 1,024 × 1,024  
byte (should be called 1 mebibyte), and 1 Gigabyte 1,024 × 1,024 ×  
1,024 byte (should be called one gibibyte). The result of all this is  
that a file that according to the operational system consists of 64  
kilobyte data contains 64 × 1024 bytes, or 64 × 1024 × 8 bits.

So is the Defaults file incorrect?  Should bytes = false by default?


Sean


=======================================
Sean Whitney
PMB #435, 1901 NE 162nd Ave, Suite D105
Vancouver, WA 98684
T. 360.607.7945
F. 815.364.0687
aim: seanmwhitney
email: [email protected]
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