Baud Rate is a measure of the information carrying capacity or signalling rate on a communications channel, and is the maximum number of discrete signal events that can be transmitted per second.
Baud Rate has often been used as a measure of the speed at which computers can transfer data through a modem. However, it is a term that has caused a lot of confusion, and some people have mistakenly used the term interchangeably with Bits per Second (bps). Bauds and bits are not always the same thing, as more than one bit may be transferred in one Baud. Nowadays Bits Per Second (bps) is used instead of Baud, because it is a more accurate measurement of the actual data transfer rate, and the Baud is best avoided