Standards For Fibre Optics

In order for various manufacturers to be able to develop components that function compatibly in fiber optic communication systems, a number of standards have been developed. The International Telecommunications Union publishes several standards related to the characteristics and performance of fibers themselves, including

ITU-T G.651, "Characteristics of a 50/125 µm multimode graded index optical fibre cable"

ITU-T G.652, "Characteristics of a single-mode optical fibre cable"

Other standards, produced by a variety of standards organisations, specify performance criteria for fiber, transmitters, and receivers to be used together in conforming systems. Some of these standards are the following:

10 Gigabit Ethernet

FDDI

Fibre Channel

Gigabit Ethernet

HIPPI

SDH

SONET

Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet packets at a rate of a gigabit per second, as defined by the IEEE 802.3-2002 standard.

Initially, Gigabit Ethernet was deployed in high-capacity backbone network links (for instance, on a high-capacity campus network). In 2000, Apple's Power MAC G4 and PowerBook G4 were the first mass produced personal computers featuring the 1000BASE-T connection. It has since become a built-in feature in many Macintoshes and PC's.

Fiber Gigabit Ethernet has recently been overtaken by 10 Gigabit Ethernet which was ratified by the IEEE in 2002 and provided data rates 10 times greater than that of Gigabit Ethernet. Work on copper 10 Gigabit Ethernet over twisted pair has just been completed, but as of June 2006, the only currently available adapters for 10 gigabit Ethernet over copper requires special cabling and is limited to 15 m.

The Synchronous Optical NETwork, commonly known as SONET, is a standard for communicating digital information using lasers or light emitting diodes (LED's) over optical fibre as defined by GR-253-CORE from Telecordia. It was developed to replace the PDH system for transporting large amounts of telephone and data traffic and to allow for interoperability between equipment from different vendors. 

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