RFC 1605

RFC 1605: SONET to Sonnet Translation 💖

okay bestie, let's start with the title block 🎀 This one comes from the Network Working Group, and the author is W. Shakespeare of Globe Communications (full name William Shakespeare, more on that at the end 👀). It's Category: Informational and it's dated 1 April 1994 🌸 It doesn't list anything it obsoletes or updates, so it's totally its own main character ✨

Status of This Memo ✨

This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited 🦋

Abstract 🌙

Okay so, Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) sends data in frames of bytes, which makes it pretty easy to imagine ways of squishing SONET frames so you get more bandwidth out of a given fiber optic link 🧚 This memo describes one particular method, called SONET Over Novel English Translation (SONNET). It's giving compression, but make it poetry 💅

Protocol Overview 💅

In brief, SONNET is a method for compressing 810-byte (9 lines by 90 bytes) SONET OC-1 frames into approximately 400-byte (fourteen line decasyllabic) English sonnets 📜 This compression scheme gets you roughly 50% average compression, and that's why SONNET compression speeds are designated OCh-#. The 'h' means 50% (one half) compression, and the # is the speed of the uncompressed link 🔥 The acronym is pronounced "owch." Not me saying "owch" every time 💀

Mapping the 2*704 possible SONET payloads works by matching each possible payload pattern with its equivalent Cerf catalog number (see [1], which lists a vast number of sonnets in English, many of which are truly terrible but suffice for the purposes of this memo) 😭 The catalog is *giving homework energy, but it gets the job done 📚

Basic Transmission Rules 🌈

The basic transmission rules are honestly so simple 🫶 The basic SONET OC-1 frame gets replaced with the matching sonnet at the transmission end, and then the sonnet gets converted back to SONET at the receiving end. So for example, SONET frame 12 is transmitted as:

     When do I count the clock that tells the time
     And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
     When I behold the violet past prime,
     And sable curls,...

For rates higher than OC-1, the OC-1 frames can either come interleaved or get concatenated into larger frames. Under SONNET conversion rules, interleaved frames have their matching sonnet representations interleaved too 🦋 So SONET frames 33, 29 and 138 in an OC-3 frame would be converted to this sequence:

     Full many a glorious morning have I seen
     When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
     When my loves swears that she is made of truth
     Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye
     I all alone beweep my outcast state,
     I do believe her, though I know she lies
     Kissing with golden face...

Meanwhile, in an OC-3c frame, the individual OC-1 frames get concatenated one after another, like this:

     Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-
     tops with sovereign eye Kissing with golden face...

     When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone
     beweep my outcast state,...

     When my loves swears that she is made of truth I do believe her,
     though I know she lies...

(This example, perhaps, makes clear why data communications experts consider concatenated SONET more efficient and esthetically pleasing 🥹🎀)

Timing Issues ⏰

It is critical in this translation scheme to maintain consistent timing within a frame 🧚 If SONET frames or converted sonnets shift in time, the SONET pointers, or worse, poetic meter, may suffer 😭 bestie, protect the meter at all costs 💜

References 📚

[1] Cerf, B., "A Catalog of All Published English Sonnets to 1950", Random House, 1953. (Now out of print.)

Security Considerations 💀

Security issues are not discussed in this memo 🙈 Honestly this is the least iconic part of the whole document, and that's on the record 😭

Author's Address 🫶

William Shakespeare Globe Communications London, United Kingdom

Any suggestions that this, or any other work by this author, might be the work of a third party such as C. Marlow, R. Bacon, or C. Partridge or based on a previously developed theme by P.V. Mockapetris are completely spurious 👑 The author was definitely doing this solo, periodt 💅✨