Re: Past one terabit/second on fiber

At 11:10 AM 5/15/96 -0400, brian dodds wrote:
>On Tue, 14 May 1996, jim bell wrote:
>
>> But with 
>> fiber transmission probably less than 1/100th the cost of older coaxial 
>> transmission systems, per connection, it is unclear why they're even 
>> continuing to meter LD phone calls.  
>
>especially when 1Tb fiber is in practice - our phone calls will take only 
>nanoseconds! :)

Reminds me of an old joke:  "This computer's so fast it does an infinite 
loop in 5 seconds!"

>anything included in that as to why they used a dfb laser for channel 16? 
>or is it something obvious i'm missing?

They probably just wanted to establish that it could be done, to show that 
this wasn't dependant on high-cost laser systems.  External cavity lasers 
raise cost and size substantially, but in a laboratory setting they're the 
most convenient to use.

 
>i notice they're still using the encyclopedia/second benchmark..

It's an old habit, I suppose.  It's hard to explain "one trillion", at least 
to non-tech types.  A good modern replacement might be to say, "200 CDROM's 
per second", except that even today most people don't know how much storage 
a CDROM represents.  "16 million one-way phone calls" is also helpful as a 
benchmark.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com

On Wed, 15 May 1996, jim bell wrote:

> Reminds me of an old joke:  "This computer's so fast it does an infinite 
> loop in 5 seconds!"

a friend of mine once said his 486 (when most of us were on 286's) was so 
fast it would process commands before he typed them..

> >i notice they're still using the encyclopedia/second benchmark..
> 
> It's an old habit, I suppose.  It's hard to explain "one trillion", at least 
> to non-tech types.  A good modern replacement might be to say, "200 CDROM's 
> per second", except that even today most people don't know how much storage 
> a CDROM represents.  "16 million one-way phone calls" is also helpful as a 
> benchmark.

well, maybe we should update this measure to meet the range like they did 
with the bel.. since an encyclopedia per second (eps) is a useless 
measure, maybe we should institute the mega-encyclopedia per second, or 
`meps' which would be 1024x30volumes of text.. `this little number over 
here'll do 30 meps!'..

				bri..

--bdodds@jyacc.com
brian dodds, systems administration, jyacc, inc. wellesley, ma 
--617.431.7431x125
opinions expressed within are not necessarily my own or anyone elses..