Assignment B

Q1. answer
Synchronous Optic Network (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
(SDH) are standards used in fiber optic networks that power large telephone
and Internet networks. SONET networks are deployed in North America; SDH
networks are deployed everywhere else. Although the SONET standards
were developed before SDH, it is considered a variation of SDH because of
SDH's greater worldwide market penetration.
The data communications industry uses the concept of backbone to refer
to a large network capable of carrying heavy loads of traffic. SONET and SDH
fiber optic networks, although expensive, are ideal backbone networks,
offering high speeds and reliability. Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET)
and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that
transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously 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.
SONET and SDH, which are essentially the same, were originally designed to
transport circuit mode communications (e.g., Digital Signal1, Digital Signal3)
from a variety of different sources, but they were primarily designed to
support real-time, uncompressed, circuit-switched voice encoded in PluseCode Modulation format. 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 a communications protocol in
itself, 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 STS-3c) into which ATM cells, IP
packets, or Ethernet frames are placed.

In other words, we can say that, Both SONET and SDH are based on a
structure that has a basic frame format and speed. The frame format used by
SONET is the Synchronous Transport Signal (STS), with STS-1 as the baselevel signal at 51.84 Mbps. An STS-1 frame can be carried in an OC-1 signal.
The frame format used by SDH is the Synchronous Transport Module (STM),
with STM-1 as the base-level signal at 155.52Mbps. An STM-1 frame can be
carried in an OC-3 signal. Both SONET and SDH have a hierarchy of signalling
speeds. Multiple lower-level signals can be multiplexed to form higher-level
signals. For example, three STS-1 signals can be multiplexed together to
form an STS-3 signal, and four STM-1 signals multiplexed together to form an
STM-4 signal.
SONET and SDH are technically comparable standards. The term SONET is
often used to refer to either.