
264 Principles of Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
meant for T-1 or E1, level 2 is for T-2, level 3 is for T-3/E3, and level 4 is for
E4. However, level 1 container is divided in two parts: level 1 type 1, i.e., C11
for carrying a T-1, and level 1 type 2, i.e., C12 for carrying an E1. For level 3,
only one container size has been designed for T-3 or E3 (separate containers
would have made sense if we were able to carry 4 E3s, but that is not possible
in the given STM-1 rate of 155.520 Mbps, after keeping a margin for suf-
cient number of overhead bits, thus a little extra stufng is used for E3, while
maintaining a common container size for E3 a ...