APPLICATIONS OF FIBER OPTIC NETWORKS IN HIGH-TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH

The NASA Lewis Research Center has active programmes in fluid dynamics and solid dynamics. These require a communications network capable of transporting multimedia traffic, including data, voice, interactive and non-interactive video, real-time visualization, and data gathering from scientific experiments. The use of powerful desktop workstations, which operate as standalone devices, work cooperatively in local clusters, operate in client server mode, access central computers, and address remote sites, also impacts on network requirements. This paper provides an overview of FDDI and SONET networks and investigates their roles in supporting high-level technological research. FDDI's topology, reliability, traffic classes, data encoding, token ring operation, timers, network management issues, and candidate applications are discussed. The multiplexing hierarchy, optical signal format, OAM capability, survivability, and candidate applications of SONET networks are explored. Interoperability issues, with the SDH international standard, ATM packet switching, and BISDN networks, are also addressed.