85 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
85 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
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Fiber Optics
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Written by: Celtic Phrost
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Sysop of Hell Phrozen Over ][
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This file is intended to help most phreaks to become more familiar with
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Telco's new switching system of the future. In this article I will discuss
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how fiber optics is made possible and also many of its uses.
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Strands of fiber optic material (usually made out of glass) are bundled in
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cables not much thicker than your thumb. Conversations and electronic data
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ride on light pulses, instead of being carried on a stream of electricity.
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Fiber-optic cables are replacing the copper cables and microwave relays
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that AT&T uses. A single optical cable can transmit the volume of talk and
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data flowing simultaneously through 120 standard copper cables. The new
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technology is being refined even further and Bell claims that with this new
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switching system they would be able to send the entire text of the
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Encyclopedia Britannica from one computer to another in less than 6 seconds
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(that's 50,000,000 bits/second -- fifty megabaud!). Copper phone cables,
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which have crossed the nation since 1915, face eventual overload.
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The volume of calls is increasing throughout the nation at a rate of 10 to
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12 percent annually. There is an annual growth in computer data traffic, from
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banks and other businesses. Video conferencing, which is now restricted to
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business related areas, will become available for public use (remember,
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Alliance was once like this . . . just think of the things you can do with
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VIDEO conferencing, heh heh!). It will use the same telephone lines that
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voice and data transmission are used for.
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Other companies are also joining the fiber optic bandwagon (MCI, U.S.
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Sprint, Allnet...etc). Each fiber is capable of handling 178 trillion
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conversations. (As the guy at Telco said: "That's A LOT of SHIT on one strand
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of fiber!) Even when crowded together, conversations don't stray away from
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their assigned frequencies in the thin glass or fiber strand . . . thus,
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callers have a less chance of being distracted by cross-talk or overheard
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conversations that are experienced occasionally over copper lines.
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The key difference is that fiber-optic strands are coated so that light
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cannot escape sideways.
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Optical cable material is so clear that light could pass through a 100 mile
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thick window of it. Also,the modern material "defies a law of physics" by
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letting light go around corners. Coated strands act like a reflective pipe,
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causing light to curve and twist like in the way that water flows through a
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garden hose.
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How a fiber optic call is routed:
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Say you are calling Los Angeles from Detroit. Your telephone converts your
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voice into an electrical signal that arrives at a local digital switching
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point. The electrical signal is converted there into a series of coded pulses
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or digital bits of information. The digital bits then are converted into
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pulses of laser light shot into the optical cable.
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Next the laser beam zips to a Los Angeles digital switching center, where a
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reverse process changes light pulses back into digital bits, then into an
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electrical signal that arrives at the telephone of your Los Angeles party.
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Bell isn't just stopping with this, while 40 percent of their goal is to
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make everything software operated for ease. Some of their other work
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includes: Artificial Intelligence, robotics, speech synthesis and recognition
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and also, the study of "slug" brains; to understand how neurons connect into
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networks; gallium arsenide, the material that may outdo silicon in computer
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chips; fiber optic systems that can transmit at the rate of 20 billion bits
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per second; optical computers that use the faster photons instead of
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electrons.
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Fiber optics will also help to GREATLY enhance the fone line quality for
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computer data transfer. So people will soon be able to use the regular fone
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lines for data transfer at speeds greater than 2400 baud without worrying
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about data suicide.
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Well this ends this article on fiber optic switching or: LASS: Laser aided
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switching system. I hope you learned something from it. In my future
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articles I will discuss: PBXes, Video Conferencing, and a couple of other
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interesting things.
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Written by: Celtic Phrost
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on [Thursday July 24 1986 6:18pm]
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For use in the P.H.I.R.M. newsletter
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