Both SONET and SDH can be used to encapsulate earlier digital transmission standards, such as the PDH standard, or they can be used to directly support either Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) or so-called packet over SONET/SDH (POS) networking.OverviewSynchronous Optical Networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that transfer multiple over using or highly light. SDH differs from (PDH) in that the exact rates that are used to transport the data on SONET/SDH are tightly across the entire network, using. This. SONET and SDH often use different terms to describe identical features or functions. This can cause confusion and exaggerate their differences. With a few exceptions, SDH can be thought of as a superset of SONET.