Asynchronous transmission is so named because the timing of a signal is unimportant. Instead, information is received and translated by agreed upon patterns. As long as those patterns are followed, the receiving device can retrieve the information without regard to the rhythm in which it is sent. Patterns are based on grouping the bit stream into bytes. Each group, mostly 8 bits, is sent along the link as a unit. The sending system handles each group independently, relaying it to the link whenever ready, without regard to a timer. Without synchronization, the receiver can not use timing to predict that when the next group will arrive. To alert the receiver to the arrival of new group, therefore, an extra is added to beginning of each bite. This bit, mostly 0, is called start bit. To let the receiver know that the byte is finished, 1 or some more additional bits are appended to the end of the byte. These bits, usually 1s, are known as the stop bits. By this method, each byte is increased in the size to at least 10 bits, of which 8 are information and two or more are signals to receiver. In addition, the transmission of each byte might then is followed by the gap of varying duration. This gap can be represented either by an idle channel by the stream of additional stop bits. The start and stop bits and gap alert the receiver to the beginning and the end of each byte and allow it to synchronize with the data stream. This mechanism is called asynchronous because at byte level, sender and receiver do not have to be synchronized.