Whats the difference between DS3 and T3?
Ah, what’s in a name? Both of these terms have their origination in the T-carrier system, originally developed to provide high speed “trunk” lines between telephone company offices. Everything is based on DS0 or “digital signal level zero” which is a 64K bit per second channel. Group 24 DS0 channels together and you have a DS1. When the DS1 is connected to a wire circuit, it is called a T1. T1 runs at 1.544 Mbps (megabits per second). Not fast enough? OK, group 28 DS1 channels together (equivalent to 28 T1 lines) and you have a DS3 or digital signal level 3 running at 44.736 Mbps, or 45 Mbps for short. Connect that to a wire circuit and its called a T3. By the way, that T3 line is equivalent to 672 voice channels. DS3 and T3 terms are often used interchangeably. So, are T3 and OC-3 equivalent? No, not really. T3 is the “big daddy” of the T-carrier system. T3 is copper wire based, although using coaxial cable rather than pairs of phone wires to support the higher speed. OC-3 is another
