Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)
The synchronous optical network is a multiplexing system similar to conventional time-division multiplexing except SONET was developed to be used with optical fibers.
SONET is the name for a standard family of interfaces for high speed optical links. These start at 51.84 Mbps, which is referred to as synchronous transport level 1 (STS-1). It is comprised of 28 DS-1 signals. Each DS-1 signal is equivalent to a single 24-channel T1 digital carrier system. With STS-1, it is possible to extract or add individual DS-1 signals with completely disassembling the entire frame. OC-48 is the second level of SONET multiplexing. It has a transmission bit rate of 2.48Gbps.
SONET Applications:
1. High speed backbone networks
2. Basic architecture for B-ISDN
3. Basic architecture for ATM
4. High speed optical networks for data communications.
