Short for Optical Carrier, used to specify the speed of fiber optic networks conforming to the SONET standard. The table shows the speeds for common OC levels.

Optical Carrier	Speed
OC-1	51.85 Mbps
OC-3	155.52 Mbps
OC-9	466.56 Mbps
OC-12	622.08 Mbps
OC-19	933.12 Mbps
OC-24	1.244 Gbps
OC-36	1.866 Gbps
OC-48	2.488 Gbps
OC-96	4.977 Gbps
OC-192	9.953 Gbps
OC-768	40 Gbps
OC-3072	160 Gbps

Each channel is 51.85 Mbps. An OC-3, for example, has 3 channels adding up to 155.52 Mbps.

Currently, Cisco CRS-1 System features OC-768 line cards. These cards are priced at $2,000,000 USD each.

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by redxii edited by Oxygen
last modified: 2005-01-20 01:51:30