Abstract: “Access technology holds key to getting attached to Internet from customer premises equipment in a broadband network. The use of different physical media types such as ATM, Ethernet and SONET have further paved way for use of one or combination of such access protocols to each one of media types. However, fundamentally Point to Point Protocol (PPP) has emerged as predominant solution for accessing broadband networks, and has generated wider acceptability among service providers. This paper discusses broadband network architecture and how PPP fits in overall scheme of things in broadband access network. Further various PPP protocol extensions over Ethernet (PPPOE), ATM (PPPOA) and combination (PPPOEOA) have been individually discussed in the context of their use cases”

Keywords: Protocol, Architectures, Broadband Access