Optical Carrier Connections
Fiber optic connections offer extremely high speed transmission rates.
What is Optical Carrier Service?
Optical Carrier Services is a fiber optic service providing different data transmission speeds measured in "OC" transmission rates. OC rates are the units of measurement used to quantify the speed and for customers. One size does not fit all, so it will depend on the their bandwidth needs.
High-speed fiber-optic connections are explained by Optical Carrier or "OC" transmission rates. SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) is deployed to connect fiber-optic transmission systems allowing data streams at different rates to be multiplexed. The name for this is OCx or OC-n, where the "x" or "n" represents a multiplier of the basic OC-1 transmission rate, which is 51.84 Mbps. SONET has various Optical Carrier (OC) levels from 51.8 Mbps (OC-1) to 160 Gbps (OC-3072)
Some Key Details About Optical Carrier Lines:
Small and medium sized businesses that require high-speed Internet connectivity may use OC-3 or OC-12 connections. ISPs which require much larger amounts of bandwidth may use one or more OC-48 connections. Generally, OC-192 and greater connections are used to support the “Internet backbone”, which connects the largest networks of the entire world.
- OC-n Lines are secure transmissions which may be used for high bandwidth needs
- Optical carriers do NOT have any distance limitations
- Optical carriers operate at a maximum speed of 160 Gbps and costs more than Ethernet
- Ethernet, however, can also be carried on SONET and Ethernet may be widely available in various buildings.
- SONET is a “self healing network “technology due to the use of multiple transmission paths between network nodes
OC lines are typically used by big corporations with global operations. Optical carrier connections can support the transmission of large amounts of voice, IP and data. The internet backbone of ISPs and modern telecommunications networks are composed of optical carrier lines.
