What is DSLAM ?

A Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) allows telephone lines to make faster connections to the Internet. It is a network device, usually located at a telephone company central office (CO), that connects multiple customer Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)s to a high-speed Internet backbone line using multiplexing techniques. The DSLAM creates a network similar to a LAN but not subject to Ethernet distance limits, thus providing an Internet connection for the subscribers.

Hardware details
Customers connect to the DSLAM through ADSL modems or DSL routers, which are connected to the PSTN network via typical unshielded twisted pair telephone lines. Each DSLAM has multiple aggregation cards, and each such card can have multiple ports to which the customers lines are connected. Typically a single DSLAM aggregation card has 24 ports, but this number can vary with each manufacturer. The most common DSLAMs are housed in a telco-grade chassis, which is supplied with (nominal) 48 Volts DC. Hence a typical DSLAM setup may contain power converters, DSLAM chassis, aggregation cards, cabling, and upstream links. The most common upstream links in these DSLAMs use gigabit ethernet or multi-gigabit fiber optic links. read more...

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