Sonet is slowly moving into everyday business life as bandwidth requirements within the enterprise increase. Sonet, or synchronous optical network, is the standard for transmitting synchronous data on optical electrical media. It allows the entire contents of a 650 MB Cd-Rom to move from coast to coast in less than one second. Business that can’t contain their entire workforce in single building are adding sonet rings to interconnect offices in MANs and packet over sonet has the potential to supplant ATM in LAN and across WAN.
Sonet was born out of necessity, as the population expanded and communication demands grew, copper- once the transmission material of choice ceased to be economical or practical to carry the huge number of calls nation wide. Copper also was highly prone to electrical spikes from storms and other interference. Now data that once required hundreds of copper cables could be directed down a glass fiber only slightly thicker than human hair.
