Who is Infozoic?

1. What are the main business problems and system-level issues involved in optical networking?
2. Who are the main players in optical networking?
3. How big a business is optical networking?
4. What is the migration plan from today's infrastructure?

Step one appears to be integration via DWDM

5. What's next? Will it be SONET?, ATM?, IP Packets on fiber?
6. How does Optical and Fiber play with Wireless and Mobile?

1. What is the state of the art of optical networking?
2. What will be the main standard for optical networking in the year 2000?
3. What are the main technical problems and issues? NSF
4. What are the latest breakthroughs or major developments in the last year? the move towards DWDM

2? 5? 10? The fiber amplifier

5. What is the expected error rate or packet loss rate on the optical network? SONET, DWDM, ...

Bit errors are typically below 1E-12, with packet errors below 1E-9

6. What are the main causes of latency and their expected values?

Time-of-flight, at ~ 2/3 of c, is ~5 microseconds per kilometer

E/O conversion, typically less than 100 nanoseconds

Switching, between 3 or 4 and a couple of hundred bit-clocks

Routing, switch latency plus queuing, table lookups, forwarding; currently several hundred milliseconds or more

7. What types of encoding, encryption, and or modulation will there be on the optical network?
8. What is WDM? DWDM? How many channels?
9. What is TDM? CDM?
10. What are the limits to successful transmission on an optical fiber?
11. What are the basic characteristics of the fiber presently installed in the U.S. / World?
12. Who owns all the fiber and end equipment now? Who will?
13. How is an all-optical switch constructed?
14. How does a laser work?

1. What is SONET?
2. What is ATM? ATM Digest (not just for ATM!!)
3. What is IP on Fiber (and POSIP)?

Informal statements (1) Here is a Lucent announcement on Simple Data Link, an idea for "IP packets with a …CRC check and simple scrambler, allowing the minimum possible overhead for transmitting IP".

4. What is isochronous data?

This is data that needs to arrive on a regular schedule, like voice or video, as opposed to in bursts like most computer data. This places demands on the latency of a network and the latency variations that can be tolerated before voice or video frames are lost.

5. What is Quality of Service?

QoS or "kwoss" is the introduction of priority levels to the currently egalitarian internet routing services. By allowing high-priority traffic to cut-through a router, the overall latency (delay) for these special packets will be kept low. A guarantee of low latency (the promise of QoS) will be critical for voice, but also important for video, at much higher packet sizes and rates

6. What are the requirements for IP Telephony? IP Video?

In a nutshell, the latency for small telephony packets must be kept low and with a low variance, throughout the various switching and routing hops the packets may encounter, and given the high volume of traffic that will occur..

7. What video formats will be used on the optical network? What are the requirements for Video MPEG / JPEG / HDTV / DTV ?
8.  

LANs

9. How to monitor an Ethernet: Etherboy
10. What is FDDI? FDDI-2? FFOL?
11. What type of fiber is used in FDDI and Ethernet? What about Gbit Ethernet?

1. What is IP v.4?

The Internet Protocol is based on a collection of RFCs (Requests For Comments) at the IEEE and other committees, to define a packet structure for communications networks. These documents deal with packet formats, lengths, addresses, flow control, error detection, and the like.

2. What is IP v.6 about?
3. What are routing protocols (e.g., TCP, RIP)?
4. What is OSPF?
5. What is BGP-4?
6. What is IS-IS?

1. How does one test optical fiber?

Optical Loss test sets (Link testers)

Optical Time-Domain Reflectometers (OTDRs)

Bit Error-Rate Testers (BERTs)

Protocol testers

2. How does one test a laser transmitter?

Integrating spheres

References, etalons, filters, gratings

Optical Spectrum Analyzers

Wavelength calibration

3. How does one test ....???