1 Tbps means one terabit per second, a data rate equal to 1,000 gigabits per second. In security reporting, it is often used to describe the volume of traffic in a network flood, especially a distributed denial-of-service attack. At this level, the traffic load can overwhelm links, routers, firewalls, scrubbing centers, and provider capacity long before an application server is reached.
This matters because availability can fail even when software is healthy. Defenders measure 1 Tbps events to size upstream filtering, rate limiting, and failover plans, and to test whether their infrastructure can absorb sudden spikes without dropping legitimate users. In attacks, 1 Tbps is not a magic threshold; it is a practical sign that the flood is large enough to force rapid mitigation decisions and may require help from an internet provider or cloud defense service.