A fiber optic link is provided that uses a relatively low-cost transceiver
that incorporates relatively inexpensive low bandwidth optical and
electrical components to achieve high data rate operations. The data rate
of the fiber optic link can be greater than the data rate of the laser of
the transceiver provided the laser meets certain noise requirements; in
particular, the relative intensity noise (RIN) of the laser must be low
enough to ensure low bit error rate (BER) operation of the link.