What Causes a Cyclic Redundancy Check?
Definition A Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) is an attempt to calculate a value to determine if something appears correct. In its simplest form, it can be seen as a validation test. For example, if someone wanted to send a secret message and the recipient wanted to do a very simple check to see if the message had been altered, a CRC could be calculated to verify. A simple version of a CRC would be to add up all the numbers in a stream and the CRC value would be the last digit. If the CRC calculated before the message is sent and the CRC calculated when the message is received are not the same, the message is clearly not intact. It is not a perfect method of validation, but it can be used quickly and easily, especially by computers, to check for valid data. Binary Calculations With computers, the CRC is almost always calculated by using the binary number system, a system in which there are only two digits, one and zero. This number system can be used to represent very large numbers, but t
