High-speed data services using the switched digital broadband access system

The Switched Digital Broadband Access System (SDBAS) from Lucent Technologies (co-developed with BroadBand Technologies, Inc.) offers residential and small business customers access services based on asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology. SDBAS is now being deployed by several carriers as a fiber-in-the-loop (FITL) application. With the advent of inexpensive devices from multiple vendors implementing the ATM segmentation and reassembly (SAR) function and interfacing with the peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus on the personal computer, it is now possible to support cost-effectively general-purpose consumer data services such as Internet access coexisting with other multimedia services. This paper describes the architecture for consumer data deployed as part of a service-independent and intrinsically secure ATM access system such as SDBAS. Features of such a system include support for Internet access; work-at-home (as a service differentiated from Internet access); billing, access control, authentication, and transport layer protocol management using a session and resource management entity; protocols for end point Layer 3 management; and network interworking functions. This paper describes the multi-application service-independent system architecture of an end-to-end high-speed data transport architecture coexisting with other services over the same access system.