Hi ,
The most corrupted terms in telecommunications are baud rate and bits per second. My current understanding of these terms is given here .
Baud is the number of signal level changes per second in a line, regardless of the information content of those signals. Bits per second is the rate of transfer of information bits.
For example, each character in asynchronous RS-232 coding includes a start and stop bit that are not counted as information bits, so the BPS rate is actually less than the baud rate. Present-day modems, on the other hand, use a set of discrete amplitude and phase values to encode multiple bits with each signal change. This technique, along with compression schemes and other tricks, allows BPS rates of 14,400 and higher on lines that support relatively low signal change rates (about 2400 baud for phone lines).
thanks
sarfraz