block, as does the payload. The internal structure of the overhead and payload within the frame differs slightly between SONET and SDH, and different terms are used in the standards to describe these structures. Their standards are extremely similar in implementation, making it easy to interoperate between SDH and SONET at any given bandwidth. In practice, the terms STS-1 and OC-1 are sometimes used interchangeably, though the OC designation refers to the signal in its optical form. It is therefore incorrect to say that an OC-3 contains 3 OC-1's: an OC-3 can be said to contain 3 STS-1's. SDH frame The Synchronous Transport Module, level 1 (STM-1) frame is the basic transmission format for SDH—the first level of the synchronous digital hierarchy. The STM-1 frame is transmitted in exactly 125 μs, therefore, there are 8,000 frames per second on a 155.52 Mbit/s OC-3 fiber-optic circuit. The STM-1 frame consists of overhead and pointers plus information payload. The first nine columns of each frame make up the section overhead and administrative unit pointers, and the last 261 columns make up the information payload. The pointers (H1, H2, H3 bytes) identify administrative units (AU) within the information payload. Thus, an OC-3 circuit can carry 150.336 Mbit/s of payload, after accounting for the overhead. Carried within the information payload, which has its own frame structure of nine rows and 261 columns, are administrative units identified by pointers. Also within the administrative unit are one or more virtual containers (VCs). VCs contain path overhead and VC payload. The first column is for path overhead; it is followed by the payload container, which can itself carry other containers. Administrative units can have any phase alignment within the STM frame, and this alignment is indicated by the pointer in row four. The section overhead (SOH) of a STM-1 signal is divided into two parts: the regenerator section overhead (RSOH) and the multiplex section overhead (MSOH). The overheads contain information from the transmission system itself, which is used for a wide range of management functions, such as monitoring transmission quality, detecting failures, managing alarms, data communication channels, service channels, etc. The STM frame is continuous and is transmitted in a serial fashion: byte-by-byte, row-by-row. Transport overhead The transport overhead is used for signaling and measuring transmission error rates, and is composed as follows: Section overhead Called regenerator section overhead (RSOH) in SDH terminology: 27 octets containing information