‘The high bandwidths of fiber-optic cable suit it to today's highest data-rate *8 nnolo- gies (such as video conferencing) and to carrying large ‘numbers of lower-rate technol aies at the same time. For this veason, the importance of fiber optics Oro in conjunction with the development to technologies requiring high data rates wide Tpandwidths for transmission. With their prominence came a need for standardization. Without standards, internetworking among the oxisting proprietary systems is impossi- tle, The United States (ANSD) and Europe (ITU-T have responded by defining £2 ands that, though independent, are andamnentally simitar and wiimately compatible. VTS SPE }——>} VTS EI 2.048 Mbls =—_ vrasre |}——>| vz 3 S152 Mo spy] Vine ES) VISSPE | ——>} VT3 |= ps2 6.312 Mb’s a xT Sp} VT6 SPE VT6 ps3 44.736 bis STS-1 SPE }->| ATM 48.384 MIs ra 139.264 Mbts F) sts 8 ATM 149.160 Mb’s — Figure 6.2 The mapping of lower-speed PDH streams into virtual tributaries in SONET, ‘The currently defined SONET and SDH rates are shown in Table 6.2. Note that an STS signal is an electrical signal and in many cases (particularly at the higher speeds) may never be surfaced out of the SONET equipment. The interface to other equipment is usually opticat and is essentially a scrambled version of the STS signal in optical form. Scrambling is used to prevent long runs of Os or 1s in the data stream. (See Section 4.1.1 for a more detailed explanation of scrambling.) The optical interface corresponding to the STS-3 rate is called OC-3 (optical carrier-3), and similar optical interfaces have been defined for OC-12, OC-48, and OC-192, corresponding to the STS-12, STS-48, and STS-192 signals. For SDH, the basic rate is 155 Mb/s, and is called STM-1 (synchronous transport module-1). Higher bit rate signals are defined analogous to SONET, as shown in Table 6.2. Elements of a SONET/SDH Infrastructure Figure 6.3 shows different types of SONET equipment deployed in a network SONET is deployed in three types of network configurations: rings, linear ¢ figurations, and point-to-point links, The early deployments welPtahentorn -270 Finst-GENERATION Orica Networks Table 6.2 Transmission rates for SONET/SDH, adapted from ($596). SONET Signal SDH Signal__Bit Rate (Mb/s) STS- 51.84 STS-3 STM-1 155.52 STS-12 STM-4 622.08 STS-24 1244.16 STS-48 STM-16 2488.32, STS-192 STM-64 9953.28 Backbone rng Backbone ring “ADM 7M | ADM Point point BISR2 BLSR2 Fou] Bese mises pe oc-120¢-48 Central office eel ADM ADM. UPsR Linear addéop 0c-30C412 NN [Apa oe Ra] [ow ‘0C-3/0C-12 ADM Access ring Figure 6.3 Elements of a SONET infrastructure. Several different SONET configurations are shown, including point-to-point, linear add/drop, and ring configurations. Both access and interoffice {backbone} rings are shown. The figure also explains the role of a DCS in the SONET infrastructure, to crossconnect lower-speed streams, to interconnect multiple rings, and to serve as a node on rings by itself,6.1 SONET/SDH 271 point-to-point links, and this topology is still used today for many applications. In this case, the nodes at the ends of the link are called terminal multiplexers (TMs). ‘TMs are also sometimes called line terminating equipment (LTE). In many cases, itis necessary to pick out one or more low-speed streams from a high-speed stream and, likewise, add one or more low-speed streams to a high-speed stream. This function is performed by an addfdrop multiplexer (ADM). For example, an OC-48 ADM may be able to drop and add OC-12 or OC-3 streams fronvto an OC-48 stream, Similarly, an OC-3 ADM may be able to drop DS3 streams from/to an OC-3 stream DMs are now widely used in the SONET infrastructure, ADMs can be inserted in the middle of a point-to-point link between TMs to yield a linear configuration. ‘An added function that has become a key driver in SONET deployment is that of service availability even in the presence of failures such as fiber cuts and transmis- sion equipment failures. The most common topology used for this purpose is a ring. Rings offer a high degrce of availability in the presence of failures while being topo- logically simple. The rings are made up of ADMs, which in addition to performing the multiplexing and demultiplexing operations, incorporate the protection mecha- nisms needed to handle failures. Usually, SONET equipment can be configured to work in any of these three configurations: ring ADM, linear ADM, or as a terminal multiplexer. Rings are used both in the access part of the network and in the backbone (in- teroffice) part of the network to interconnect central offices. Today, most access rings run at OC-3/OC-12 speeds, and interoffice rings at OC-12/0C-48/0C-192 speeds. Clearly these ring speeds will increase in the future. Two types of ring architectures are used: wnidirectional path-stwitched rings (UPSRs) and bidirectional line-switched rings (BLSRs}. The BLSRs can use either two fibers [BLSR/2) or four fibers (BLSR/4). We wilf discuss these arehitectures and the protection mechanisms that they incor- porate in detail in Chapter 10. In general, UPSRs are used in the access part of the network to connect multiple nodes to a hub node residing in a central office, and BLSRs are used in the interoffice part of the network to interconnect multiple central offices. Another major component in the SONET infrastructure is a digital crossconnect (DCS). A DCS is used to manage all the transmission facilities in the central office. Before DCSs arrived, the individual DS1s and DS3s in a central office were manually patched together using a patch panel. Although this worked fine for a small number of traffic streams, it is quite impossible to manage today’s central offices, which handle thousands of such streams, using this approach. A DCS automates this process and replaces such a patch panel by crossconnecting these individual streams under software control. It also does performance monitoring and has grown to incorporate multiplexing as well. DCSs started out handling only PDH streams but have evolved to handle SONET streams as well. They can handle a large number of ports, for