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TESTIMONIAL
" We have found the Anue Network Simulator to be a very effective tool for our virtual concatenation testing. We highly recommended it! "
-Mark Watkins
Agere Systems
Agere Systems
White Paper
Next Gen SONET Testing:
Using a Network Delay Emulator
In the world of data communications, high speed networking over large distances is the wave of the future. Everywhere, information is moving faster. Data rates are rapidly increasing from 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) to 10 Gbps. At the same time, the world is shrinking. Sending digital information around the globe will soon become as easy as sending it across the office.
Communications technology companies have made great strides in their networking products, which is accelerating the move to higher speed communications. In addition, service providers have laid enormous amounts of high-speed fiber optic cable to transmit data over long distances. However, these efforts have been limited by a significant gap between two well-established but separate methods for transmitting data:
- Ethernet, the dominant method for sending data over short distances, such as local area networks (LANs), and
- SONET, traditionally used to carry voice traffic over long distances (i.e., thousands of miles) of optical fiber.
SONET is circuit based; Ethernet is packet based. SONET is continuous; Ethernet is “bursty.” SONET bandwidth is defined by OC rates (see Table 1) that do not match the 10/100/1G/10G Ethernet rates. Nonetheless, both SONET and Ethernet are pervasive and here to stay. There are hundreds of SONET Rings in operation today, and in 2002, 450,000 OC-48 SONET ports were added worldwide. The Ethernet market is even larger. Already a multi-billion dollar market, Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) equipment revenue could reach $44 billion by 2005.
Though developed to carry voice traffic, SONET is now being adapted to carry data. Promising new technologies have been developed to send packetized data over the huge installed base of SONET rings around the world. In addition to Ethernet, other protocols -- such as IP, ATM, SDL, HDLC, Fibre Channel, etc. -- can be transmitted over long distances via SONET using these new technologies. In particular, Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), Virtual Concatenation (VC) and its associated Link Control Access System (LCAS) are open standards that have been dubbed “The Holy Grail of SONET” by industry experts. These open standards enable the sending of high-speed data (like Ethernet) over SONET.