Going Long! Sending weird signals over long haul optical networks (38c3)

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Computer network operators depend on optical transmission everywhere as it is what glues together our interconnected world. But most of the industry is running the same kinds of signals down the optical transceivers. As part of my need to "Trust, but verify" I wanted to check my assumptions on how the business end of modern optical modules worked, so join me in a adventure of sending weird signals many kilometres, and maybe set some records for the most wasteful bandwidth utilisation of optical spectrum in 2024! Computer network operators depend on optical stuff everywhere as it is what glues together our interconnected world. But most of the industry is running the same kinds of signals down the optical transceivers. As part of my need to "Trust, but verify" I wanted to check my assumptions on how the business end of modern optical modules worked, so join me in a adventure of sending weird signals many kilometres, and maybe set some records for the most wasteful bandwidth utilisation of optical spectrum in 2024! In this talk we will cover the basis of optical networks, how it fits in with networking, some of the weird things pluggable optics do, the perhaps odd industry defacto standards, and bending the intended use cases of existing tech to make signals that would would deeply probably confuse a modest signals intelligence agency Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2024/hub/event/going-long-sending-weird-signals-over-long-haul-optical-networks/