Octet (computing)

An octet in computing is like a group of eight little friends that always hang out together. These little friends are all made up of a bunch of tiny pieces called binary digits or "bits" for short.

Each little friend, or octet, can represent a number from 0 to 255 by arranging their bits in different ways. Kind of like how you can make different numbers with the digits 0-9.

Computers use octets a lot to communicate with each other over networks, like when you send an email or open a webpage. Think of it like the computer sending a secret message to another computer, but this message is made up of lots of little groups of eight friends that know how to arrange themselves to represent different numbers.