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What Is SONET/SDH? SONET, used in North America, and SDH, used in Europe, are almost identical standards for the transport of data over optical media between two fixed points. They use 810-byte frames as a container for the transport of data at speeds of up to 9.6 Gbps. SONET/SDH is used as the bearer layer for higher-layer protocols such as ATM or IP/PPP, employed on devices that switch or route traffic to a particular end point. The functions of SONET/SDH in the broadband arena are roughly analogous to those of T1/E1 in the narrowband world. The SONET/SDH standards define the packaging of data within SONET/SDH frames, the encoding of signals on a fiber-optic cable, and the management of the SONET/SDH link. The advantages of SONET/SDH include the following: • rapid point-to-point transport of data with little overhead • standards-based multiplexing of SONET/SDH datastreams • transport independent from the services and applications that it supports • self-healing ring structure to reroute traffic around faults within a particular link • widely deploye