Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM)

A Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer is a network device at a telephone company’s central office that receives signals from many customer Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connections and links the signals to a high-speed backbone line using multiplexing techniques.

When the telephone company receives a DSL signal from a customer, an xDSL modem with a POTS splitter detects voice calls and data. The data is transferred to the DSLAM, where it aggregates (or multiplex) them together and transmits the multiplexed signals to the Internet, then back through the DSLAM and xDSL modem before returning to the customer's PC.

The more DSLAMs a phone company has, the more customers it can support.

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