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I use to think that the use of binary encoding is because every device has its way to interpret bytes. Thus if a router sends a bit as some significant information other router might treat this byte as a parity byte or something else... But isn't it all already covered in character encoding?? I mean character encoding tells what byte is representing which character, right? (Or am I missing something? ) Isn't the information about character encoding(like UTF-8) enough for devices to read bytes directly? If yes why would anyone want to encode this (Using something like base64) cause it will increase the size of the data required to be transferred.

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  • You can't encode binary data as utf-8. Commented Jan 23, 2019 at 17:26
  • Trick question: How many bytes are there in a UTF-8 character? Bonus: how are types like "characters" stored on a computing device? How are they transferred? Commented Jan 23, 2019 at 18:10
  • Not sure I understand. Computer works with binaries, so we use often binary encoding (more efficient for computer). But we have a lot of text protocols (email [SMTP], web [HTTP], etc.) send text and expect text as answer. Modem worked in the same way: you sent AT commands. SQL is text (so one convert binary to text, send to database, and database convert back to binary. Now we use a lot JSON, also text. In past we exchanged data with csv. Different uses, but we still use both Commented Jan 23, 2019 at 19:16
  • @jdv the number of bytes can vary.. ASCII characters still take 1 byte and it can increase depending on what characters are being encoded.. Characters are stored in binary... And the 3rd question is what I am actually confused about.. Why can not these characters be transfered in bits and bytes after encoding using utf 8.. Commented Jan 24, 2019 at 8:17
  • @GiacomoCatenazzi So to send data we convert binary to text and than this text is again converted in binary so that the machins can understand... Commented Jan 24, 2019 at 10:15
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