What is SONET:SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) is a standard ratified by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for high-capacity

optical communications. It is currently the leading backbone transmission technology implemented by large carriers. SONET is divided into an electrical connection and an optical connection with a multiplexer in between. SONET signals are called Synchronous Transport Signal (STS) on the electrical connection side and Optical Carrier (OC) on the optical connection side. The lowest SONET signal rate is the STS-1 (or OC-1) that has a rate of 51.84 Mbps. Higher rates are achieved by multiplexing STS-1s. A STS-1 is the equivalent of a DS3 (or T3) connection. The different connection rates are as follows: STS-1 STS-3 STS-12 STS-48 STS-96 51.84 Mbps 155.52 Mbps 622.08 Mbps 2488.32 Mbps 4976.64 Mbps

OC-1 OC-3 OC-12 OC-48 OC-96

Generally SONET uses fiber optic cable as a transmission medium. There are two main types of optical cable, single-mode and multi-mode. The difference between the two cable types is the diameter of the silicon dioxide core. Multi-mode cable has a core that is 50 to 100 microns in diameter, while single-mode cable has a diameter of 7 to 9 microns. SONET interfaces use single-mode fiber optic cable that is defined in three different ranges: Short Reach (SR) with a range of up to 2km, Intermediate Reach (IR) with a range of up to 15km, and Long Reach (LR) with a range of up to 40km. For short-run or interoffice applications, SONET can run over coaxial cable with maximum distances of 900ft for STS-1 rates and 450ft for STS-3 rates. The fiber optic cable used for SONET is immune to electrical interference, but can suffer from attenuation and dispersion. In SONET networking, a laser converts the ones and zeros of a traditional electrical signal into pulses of light (using a laser or diode). An optical receiver receives these pulses at the far end of the cable. As the signal travels down the cable, the pulses get smaller with distancethis is attenuation (same concept as for copper cable). There are three types of dispersion. Modal dispersion is caused by light waves bouncing around in the core of the cable. Some of the light rays travel a longer distance than others causing the pulses to spread out and become harder to differentiate. The smaller the core diameter of the cable, the less modal distortion. Different colors of light travel at different speeds, causing the pulses to spread out as they travel down the cable. This is called chromatic dispersion. Polarization mode dispersion (PMD) occurs when the core of the cable is not perfectly round. PMD is a crucial problem in long haul fiber optic networks. The frame structure of a SONET STS-1 frame is depicted as a two dimensional grid consisting of 9 rows by 90 columns of 8-bit bytes, or 6480 bits per frame. The frame rate is

8000 frames per second for a total of 51,840,000 bps (6480x8000). The first 3 columns are used for transport overhead with the rest of the frame used for data.

Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) are standardized multiplexing protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams over optical fiber using lasers or highly coherent light from light-emitting diodes (LEDs). At low transmission rates data can also be transferred via an electrical interface. The method was developed to replace the Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy (PDH) system for transporting large amounts of telephone calls and data traffic over the same fiber without synchronization problems. SONET generic criteria are detailed in Telcordia Technologies Generic Requirements document GR-253-CORE.[1] Generic criteria applicable to SONET and other transmission systems (e.g., asynchronous fiber optic systems or digital radio systems) are found in Telcordia GR-499-CORE.[2] SONET and SDH, which are essentially the same, were originally designed to transport circuit mode communications (e.g., DS1, DS3) from a variety of different sources, but they were primarily designed to support real-time, uncompressed, circuit-switched voice encoded in PCM format.[3] The primary difficulty in doing this prior to SONET/SDH was that the synchronization sources of these various circuits were different. This meant that each circuit was actually operating at a slightly different rate and with different phase. SONET/SDH allowed for the simultaneous transport of many different circuits of differing origin within a single framing protocol. SONET/SDH is not itself a communications protocol per se, but a transport protocol. Due to SONET/SDH's essential protocol neutrality and transport-oriented features, SONET/SDH was the obvious choice for transporting the fixed length Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) frames also known as cells. It quickly evolved mapping structures and concatenated payload containers to transport ATM connections. In other words, for ATM (and eventually other protocols such as Ethernet), the internal complex structure previously used to transport circuit-oriented connections was removed and replaced with a large and concatenated frame (such as OC-3c) into which ATM cells, IP packets, or Ethernet frames are placed.