The term "asynchronous" is usually used to describe
communications in which data can be transmitted intermittently rather
than in a steady stream. For example, a telephone conversation is
asynchronous because both parties can talk whenever they like. If
the communication were synchronous, each party would be required
to wait a specified interval before speaking.
The difficulty with asynchronous communications is that the receiver
must have a way to distinguish between valid data and noise. In
computer communications, this is usually accomplished through a
special start bit and stop bit at the beginning and end of each
piece of data. For this reason, asynchronous communication is sometimes
called start-stop transmission.
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