IP-over-Toslink | KittenLabs
At the 38th Chaos Communication Congress (38C3) benjojo gave a very interesting talk titled: “Going Long! Sending weird signals over long haul optical networks”
After thinking about it for a while, this idea didn’t seem very far-fetched. Toslink is a fully digital, bit-perfect way to transport digital PCM audio – aka data. Why not transport IP packets instead? We could even go full-circle and transport IP-over-Toslink over single-mode fiber!
Toslink is really just S/PDIF (aka IEC 958) transmitted over light instead of coaxial cable. As such, it typically carries 48kHz of uncompressed PCM audio at 16bits in 2 channels: 48000 Hz * 16 bits * 2 channels = 1 536 000 bits/second
1536 kbit/s sounds like a usable connection speed after all… Fun fact: That’s about the same throughput as a T1 line (1544 kbit/s).
In audio setups, Toslink/SPDIF is sometimes used for digital data as well, to transport digital (often multi-channel) compressed audio formats like AC-3 or DTS.
