Page 17 - Optical Switching And Networking Handbook

2 Chapter 1

Welcome to this next installment of the telecommunications made
simple writings! When I first started to write in the early 1990s, I
was overwhelmed with the amount of work necessary to produce the
first book. That was the original Disaster Recovery Planning for
Telecommunications, Data and Networks, and it was a rather short
book. However, immediately after completing the final edit, I swore
never to write another book. Well, here we are 10 books later, still
saying the same things, but releasing a new one. This time the topic
is fiberoptics, fiber networking, and optical switching for your read-
ing enjoyment and understanding. The intent here is to make the
technology easy to understand while giving you facts and applica-
tions in the state of the industry. Similar to the past books, if you are
an engineer looking for technical discussions in the goriest detail,
this book is not for you. However, if you fall into the following cate-
gories, then this is for you:
Financial analysts trying to understand the cost implications of
a fiberoptic network for investment or funding purposes
Telecommunications administrator trying to understand what
everyone is all excited about
Salesperson in a telecommunications company trying to “walk
the walk” and “talk the talk”
Data processing person trying to get the most bang out of the
data revolution
Supplier of bandwidth needing to understand what the
manufacturers are all saying
“Newbie” in the industry trying to understand the technologies

What is this all about? I keep being asked to do things in my own
simple way. I enjoy public speaking, and I enjoy watching people
learn. You can tell when they are learning by that expression on
their face when the revelation of a concept finally becomes clear.
Therefore, I undertook this book on optical networking and switch-
ing to try to simplify the overall process of what is going on.Too often
the vendors and standards bodies are busy writing standards docu-
ments or documentation on how equipment works. They know what
they are talking about, so they assume that the readers in the indus-
try also will know what they are saying. Unfortunately, that is not