Cyclic Redundancy Check

The cyclic redundancy check, or CRC, is a technique for detecting errors in digital

data, but not for making corrections when errors are detected. It is used primarily

in data transmission. In the CRC method, a certain number of check bits, often

called a checksum, are appended to the message being transmitted. The receiver

can determine whether or not the check bits agree with the data, to ascertain with

a certain degree of probability whether or not an error occurred in transmission. If

an error occurred, the receiver sends a “negative acknowledgement” (NAK) back

to the sender, requesting that the message be retransmitted.

The technique is also sometimes applied to data storage devices, such as a

disk drive. In this situation each block on the disk would have check bits, and the

hardware might automatically initiate a reread of the block when an error is

detected, or it might report the error to software