AT&T® SONET
AT&T® Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) Services provide dedicated, point-to-point or multipoint transmission of voice, data, and video at very high speeds. AT&T® SONET Services give you performance and availability that's unmatched by any other private-line facility.
AT&T provides SONET Services in two bandwidth ranges: 155 megabits per second (Mbps) and 622 Mbps. You can configure an individual SONET line in increments of 1.544 Mbps (DS1 channels), increments of 45 Mbps (DS3 channels), or any combination of the two. SONET Services give you all the bandwidth you need for sophisticated applications such as video conferencing, LAN interconnection, imaging, and multimedia transmission.
SONET Services offer two kinds of connectivity: point-to-point and multipoint (called AT&T® Dedicated Ring Service). The number of stations you can connect are virtually unlimited, restricted only by the capacity of the connecting multiplexers.
SONET Services have a performance objective of 99.9975% error-free seconds, and an availability rate of at least 99.999%. Also, multipoint ADRS protects against downtime because data always has two paths: a primary path,
and a secondary path that acts as a backup for disaster recovery. AT&T offers point-to-point survivability options that place the backup route in cable that's physically removed from the primary path. With full route diversity, you're guaranteed 100% availability.
You get...
Performance—SONET Services give you unmatched performance, with an objective of 99.9975% error-free seconds.
Integration—SONET Services combine bandwidth and multiplexing capabilities to let you fully integrate voice, data, and video over a single facility.
Availability—SONET Services' survivability options offer you availability of up to 100%.
Security—SONET Services maximize security and eliminate contention by containing your data traffic on your organization's own dedicated private lines.
It's good for...
LAN-to-LAN and host-to-host interconnection
Video conferencing
Team engineering and design
Distributed processing
Advanced research (e.g., meteorology, seismology, nuclear science)
How It Works
In AT&T's Network
SONET technology allows AT&T to monitor the performance of transmissions in real time. This gives AT&T the power to carry your traffic over their fiber-optic network at unprecedented speeds, in either a point-to-point or multipoint configuration. AT&T's Dedicated Ring Service (ADRS) connects one to 16 nodes, where each node can be one of your sites or an AT&T's central office—depending on your needs.
At Your Premises
For point-to-point SONET Service, a SONET multiplexer at each of your sites connects to AT&T's 155- or 622-Mbps fiber-optic line. For multipoint ADRS, each of your sites connects to AT&T's network in one of three ways: via a DS1 or DS3 access line connected to a CSU/DSU, or a 622-Mbps line connected to a SONET multiplexer