Networking —

SONET/OC-x Levels

Bell Communications Research developed SONET, a fiber-optic WAN technology that delivers voice, data, and video at speeds in multiples of 51.84Mbps. Bell's main goals in creating SONET were to create a standardized access method for all carriers and to unify different standards around the world. SONET is capable of transmission speeds between 51.84Mbps and 2.488Gbps.

One of Bell's biggest accomplishments with SONET was to create a new system that defined data rates in terms of Optical Carrier (OC) levels, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3 OC Levels and Transmission Rates

OC Level

Transmission Rate

OC-1

51.84Mbps

OC-3

155.52Mbps

OC-12

622.08Mbps

OC-24

1.244Gbps

OC-48

2.488Gbps

OC-192

9.953Gbps