N-GEN Communications Web-based Seminars ©NGCS

Seminar - An Overview of Communications Technologies

Module 5 - SONET, WDM, DWDM and B-ISDN Technologies                                                             Slide 25 of 76 _________________                                                                                  __________

                                        What is SONET?

                                A North American Standard for Optical Data
                                  Transmission 

                                A Transport Interface

                                A Set of Standards

                                Capable of Transmitting at G bps

                                Independent of Transported Services and Applications

_________________                                                                                  __________

SONET defines a set of standards for transporting data at a very high speed on optical fiber medium. It is a North American Standard with a basic line rate at 51.84 M bps and reaching to 9.953 G bps.

SONET is a set of standards for:
            - a hierarchical family of optical transport signals
            - a synchronous frame structure
            - a set of operations procedures

SONET has been designed to be as independent as possible of the specific services and applications it is intended to support.