Plesiochronous digital hierarchy

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The plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH) is a technology used in telecommunications networks to transport large quantities of data over digital transport equipment such as fibre optic and microwave radio systems.^[1] The term plesiochronous is derived from Greek plēsios, meaning near, and chronos, time, and refers to the fact that PDH networks run in a state where different parts of the network are nearly, but not quite perfectly, synchronized.

Backbone transport networks replaced PDH networks with synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) or synchronous optical networking (SONET) equipment over the ten years ending around the turn of the millennium (2000),^[2] whose floating payloads relaxed the more stringent timing requirements of PDH network technology. The cost in North America was $4.5 billion in 1998 alone,^[2] p. 171.

PDH allows transmission of data streams that are nominally running at the same rate, but allowing some variation on the speed around a nominal rate. By analogy, any two watches are nominally running at the same rate, clocking up 60 seconds every minute. However, there is no link between watches to guarantee that they run at exactly the same rate, and it is highly likely that one is running slightly faster than the other.