Gigabit networking research

Two approaches to achieving transmission capacities of 20 Gbit/s that are currently being supported in various network testbeds are a) expanding the SONET/SDH transmission hierarchy to the OC-192 (9.953 Gb/s) data rate and b) using wavelength division multiplexing techniques. The former approach offers the potential to upgrade existing optical fiber facilities and to use transmission protocols and operations procedures that are already familiar to the data communications community. One of the most significant advantages to OC-192 systems is the potential to reduce network implementation and operations costs.