PPPoA

The term PPPoA is a short form for Point – to – Point Protocol over ATM or Point to Point Protocol over Asynchronous Transfer Mode. This protocol relies on the combination of two different protocols to work and these two protocols are configured in such a way that they can to work together with one another in a combination. These two protocols are PPP and ATM. PPP and ATM both are widely accepted standards throughout the world, so it can be assured that PPPoA can be used anywhere in the world, without any problem.

This PPPoA is an ADSL, that is, end to end asymmetric digital subscriber line architecture and is mainly used with DOCSIS and DSL carriers. PPPoA has PPP as a protocol in it, thus is has all the features that the PPP has to offer like authentication, encryption and compression. This protocol, PPPoA is specified in the RFC 2364.

There is another protocol just like the this one named PPPoE, however, PPPoA is much better than PPPoE as the latter avoids the issues that the PPPoE suffers from, which are related to having  MTU lower than the standard Ethernet transmission protocols.

To configure the PPPoA protocol one needs to separately configure the PPP and ATM protocol. The data in this protocol is generally stored in the cable modem or the data modem and might or might not be visible to the user. It all depends upon the vendor that is producing this protocol and on the choice of the administrator. The PPP configuration includes the user name, password and user credentials, while the ATM configuration includes VCL, Modulation and Multiplexing. With regards to the configuration process of ATM, it can be hard-coded in to the firmware of a DSL modem or it can be done manually by the user or the administrator himself.