What are error control techniques?

Error control is the technique of detecting and correcting blocks of data during
communication. In other words, it checks the reliability of characters both at the bit
level and packet level.

Some of the common techniques used in error control is acknowledgements, timeouts and
negative acknowledgements. In a network, two types of errors occur: single-bit errors and
burst errors. With a single-bit error, only one bit of data is altered; in a burst error, two or more
bits could be altered.
single-bit error
In a single-bit error, a 0 is changed to a 1 or a 1 to a 0. 

Burst Error:
In a burst error, multiple bits are changed. Single-Bit Error: The term single-bit error means
that only 1 bit of a given data unit (such as a byte, character, or packet) is changed from 1 to 0
or from 0 to 1

In burst error, it is not necessary that only consecutive bits are changed. The length of burst
error is measured from first changed bit to last changed bit. As shown in fig. length of burst error
is 8, although some bits are unchanged in between. Burst error is most likely to occur in a serial
transmission. The noise occurring for a longer duration affects multiple bits. The number of bits
affected depends on the data rate & duration of noise. For e.g. if data rate is 1 kbps, a noise of
1/100 second can affect 10 bits.