ISP Jargon Buster Home

This is a network device installed at the telephone companies HQ or street cabinet, which receives signals from multiple customer Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) broadband connections and puts the signals on a high-speed backbone line using multiplexing techniques. That probably made no sense whatsoever.

DSLAMs in an Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) setup usually exist inside Street Cabinets. Essentially they take the connections from subscribers (through Line Cards slotted into the DSLAM) and aggregate that traffic into a backbone capacity connection. Street cabinets can usually hold up to 4 or 6 line cards, which depending upon size can cater for up to 288 subscribers (per cabinet).