What's My IP?

DSL: What's the difference between a DSLAM, and an IP DSLAM?

• Question comes from a article about investing in its rural wires: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-31/at-and-t-mulls-upgrading-rural-lines-instead-of-selling-them I already know what a Digital Subscriber Line Access Module (DSLAM) is - that's the TelCo end of a wired data service. Adding what I assume is (IP) to that means ... what? Purveyors of IP DSLAMs just integrated an IP in a DSLAM product? They replaced the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) nonsense with real packets (instead of "cells") and IP?

• Answer:

  You sort of answered your own question. In general, this gets a subscriber closer to the Ethernet hand off typically associated with fiber to the home experiences for IPTV (vs. RF over glass), voice over IP, and high speed IP data access. An IP DSLAM was the first pairing of a DSLAM with either an IP card that assists with the management and operation of the multiple service access traffic associated with subscribe lines up to the notion of an integrated on board interface that was expressly proving IP for uplink and often with some (limited) IP routing capabilities. This evolution in DSL networks shifts the cost and complexity of reliance upon mapping and remapping the notion of a PVC associated with differentiated services terminate at an ATM to IP transition (a router) to that of a IP endpoint like most others in modern Ethernet service provider environments. This shifts the concern for terminating PVC into ATM cards in third-party routing hardware to that of a simpler single vendor approach. All of the selections in where and when to aggregate this is size/market dependent from small independent LEC (ILEC) to CLEC to RBOC. In terms of voice, video, and data there are also commercial variants that drive towards shifting existing copper investments towards fiber investments or hybid approaches as dictated by market size, density, and uniformity demand. Example: http://www.alliedtelesis.com/solutions/diagram-32