Technical Dictionary - Line rate

 

The line rate of a communications link is the data rate of its raw bitstream, including all framing bits and other physical layer overhead.

 

For example, the line rate of a T1 data link is 1.544 Mbit/s, of which 1.536 Mbit/s is available for data communications, and the remaining 8000 bit/s is framing overhead. ISDN Basic Rate Interface has a line rate of 160 kbit/s, and a user data rate of 144 kbit/s

 

Additional factors that reduce the throughput of communications links below their line rate can include packetization overhead, burstiness, link contention, and inefficient use of link resources by higher-level protocols.