A bitstream or bit stream is a time series of bits.
A bytestream is a series of bytes, typically of 8 bits each, and can be regarded as a special case of a bitstream.
Bitstreams are used extensively in telecommunications and computing: for example, the SDH communications technology transports synchronous bitstreams, and the TCP communications protocol transports a bytestream without synchronous timing.
When a bitstream is captured and stored on a computer storage media, a computer file is created.
Bitstream is also the name of a type foundry, see Bitstream Inc.
