Page 265 - Optical Switching And Networking Handbook

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data rate. The newer OC-768 operates at 40 Gbps. If we extend that
same logic, the results are as follows:

192 fibers 40 Gbps per (l) 1,000 l per fiber
7.680 Petra bits per second

We are now approaching some very respectable increases on a
fiber bundle. The carriers can effectively change out the infrastruc-
ture components and achieve this growth on their existing fiber
routes.
The newer zero dispersion fiber will support this and more for the
future, opening the possibilities of even greater returns on the
investment. Newer developments with the equipment manufactur-
ers also add additional sub-multiplexing on the sidebands of the
wavelength creating the possibility of 100 different subchannels (in
Radio Frequency [RF]), creating as much as 100,000 carriers on a
single fiber. This means that low-speed channels can be created to
meet the demands of the end user at perhaps 100 Mbps each. Note
the operative word here is low-speed. By setting up connections at
100 Mbps, we can literally create a 100-Mbps Ethernet connection
across the Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) or the Wide Area Net-
work (WAN), as shown in Figure 10-11. This, of course, meets some
of the future demands for the Small Office and Home Office (SOHO)
and Residential Office and Branch Office (ROBO).
Moreover, the future of the larger organization will require 1-Gbps
Ethernet or 10-Gbps Ethernet in the Campus Area Network (CAN)
that will be required to connect across the WAN for location inde-
pendence, as shown in Figure 10-12. This is where the motion is tak-
ing the industry and the fibers must be able to support the
concatenation of the bandwidth demands to meet the need of the
customer.This creates some of the “killer” applications for the future.
Through optical switching techniques, the packet-switched net-
works that have been emerging in the past few years to support the
convergence of voice, data, video, and multimedia applications will
also change. The packet-switching efficiencies have been displacing
the circuit-switching architecture of the telephony networks. How-
ever, when optical switching becomes a reality and is deployed en