Optical Networking Technology

Technological advances in semiconductor products have essentially been the primary driver for the growth of networking that led to improvements and simplification in the long-distance communication infrastructure in the twentieth century. Two major networks of networks, the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and the Internet and Internet II, exist today. The PSTN, a low-delay, fixed-bandwidth network of networks based on the circuit switching principle, provides a very high quality of service (QoS) for large-scale, advanced voice services. The Internet provides very flexible data services such as e-mail and access to theWorldWideWeb. Packetswitched internet protocol (IP) networks are replacing the electronic-switched, connection-oriented networks of the past century. For example, the Internet is primarily based on packet switching. It is a variable-delay, variable-bandwidth network that provides no guarantee on the quality of service in its initial phase. However, the Internet traffic volume has grown considerably over the last decade. Data traffic now exceeds voice traffic. Various methods have evolved to provide high levels of QoS on packet networks – particularly for voice and other real-time services. Further advances in the area of telecommunications over the last half a century have enabled the communication networks to see the light. Over the 1980s and 1990s, research into optical fibers and their applications in networking revolutionized the communications industry. Current telecommunication transmission lines employ light signals to carry data over guided channels, called optical fibers. The transmission of signals that travel at the speed of light is not new and has been in existence in the form of radio broadcasts for several decades. However, such a transmission technology over a guided medium, unlike air, with very low attenuation and bit-error rates makes optical fibers a natural choice for the medium of communication for next-generation high-speed networks. The first major change with the development of the fiber technology was to replace copper wires by fibers. This change brought high reliability in data transmission, improved the signal-to-noise ratio and reduced bit-error rates.