sonet

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
Synchronous Optical NETwork
SONET

   <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 {hierarchical
   network} 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)