Burst rate refers to the transfer of data which the hardware component happens 
to have immediately at hand, as in a cache buffer.
Sustained rate refers to the long-term average where the hardware has to also 
get data by seeking to a position on the medium and reading from it, which 
takes much longer.

     Richard Sims

On Jul 7, 2010, at 11:09 AM, Mehdi Salehi wrote:

> Hi,
> What do "sustained data rate" and "burst transfer rate" mean? I appreciate
> your explanation or any reference.
> 
> Thanks