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