Synchronous Optical NETwork

networking (SONET) A broadband networking standard based

on point-to-point optical fibre networks. SONET will

provide a high-bandwidth "pipe" to support ATM-based

services.

The SONET standard will establish a digital hierarchicalnetwork with a consistent worldwide transport scheme. SONET

has been designed to take advantage of fibre, in contrast to

the plain old telephone system which was designed for copper

wires.

SONET carries circuit-switched data in frames at speeds in

multiples of 51.84 megabits per second (Mbps) up to 48 * 51.84

Mbps = 2.488 gigabits per second. Since SONET uses multiple

channels to transmit data, each SONET frame can be

considered to be a two-dimensional table of bytes that is 9

rows high and 90 columns deep. For every OC-n level, SONET

can transmit n number of frames at a given time. Groups of

frames are called superframes.

SONET is the American version of SDH.

[Wulf Losee; Corporate Computing 8.92; STACKS; LAN Magazine

10.93].

(1994-11-30)