PPPoA - Definition and Overview

PPPOA or PPPoA, Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) over ATM, is a network protocol for encapsulating PPP frames in ATM AAL5. It used mainly with cable modem and DSL services. It offers standard PPP features such as authentication, encryption, and compression.

PPPoA is published in RFC 2364.

To configure PPPoA on a Cisco router providing DSL services, a "Virtual-Template" is configured, which is then bound to the ATM interface. A configuration snippet is below:

interface Virtual-Template1
 ip unnumbered FastEthernet0/0
 peer default ip address pool dslPPP
 ppp authentication pap

interface ATM1/0.32 point-to-point
 pvc 1/32 
  ubr 640
  encapsulation aal5mux ppp Virtual-Template1

Related topics

• PPPoE
• L2TP

External links

• A typical PPPoA architecture diagram (http://www.dslreports.com/information/kb/DSL-1/pictures)
• RFC2364 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2364.html)