Optical Networks: A Practical Perspective - Part 2. This book describes a revolution within a revolution, the opening up of the capacity of the now-familiar optical fiber to carry more messages, handle a wider variety of transmission types, and provide improved reliabilities and ease of use. In many places where fiber has been installed simply as a better form of copper, even the gigabit capacities that result have not proved adequate to keep up with the demand. The inborn human voracity for more and more bandwidth, plus the growing realization that there are other flexibilities to be had by imaginative use of the fiber, have led people. | Foreword enough bandwidth. Between now and the next edition of this book one may hope that fiber last mile solutions will finally begin to proliferate building on the technical ideas captured here. There can be no doubt that fiber optic communication can only play an ever widening if invisible role in our lives and once again I cannot recommend the book highly enough to anyone interested in the technical underpinnings. I Foreword to the First Edition by Paul E. Green Jr. Director Optical Network Technology retired Tellabs Inc. Not too many years ago whenever one wanted to send messages effectively there were really only two choices send them by wire or send them by situation lasted for decades until the mid-1960s when the fiber optics revolution began quietly at first and then with increasing force as people began to appreciate that sending pulses of light through tiny strands of glass wasn t so crazy after all. This revolution is now in full cry with 4000 strand miles of fiber being installed per day just in the United States alone. Fiber has been displacing wire in many applications and gradually it is emerging as one of the two dominant Cinderella transmission technologies of today wireless being the other. One of these wireless goes anywhere but doesn t do much when it gets there whereas the other fiber will never go everywhere but does a great deal indeed wherever it reaches. From the earliest days of fiber communication people realized that this simple glass medium has incredible amounts of untapped bandwidth capacity waiting to be mined should the day come when we would actually need it and should we be able to figure out how to tap it. That day has now come. The demand is here and so are the solutions. This book describes a revolution within a revolution the opening up of the capacity of the now-familiar optical fiber to carry more messages handle a wider variety of transmission types and provide improved reliabilities and ease of use. In many .
