logies are generally applied first. Considering the functional role in the network however, BRAS and edge routers are not less important and their evolution has been a key enabler for the diffusion of broadband services. BRAS [79,80] serves as an aggregation point for subscriber traffic (IP, PPP, Ethernet, and ATM) and provides session termination and subscriber management functions such as authentication, authorization, accounting (AAA), and IP address assignment. Pushed by the evolution of the service bundles offered by carriers, modern BRAS provide also advanced services-such as subscriber policy management (e.g., Web login), IP and layer-2 QoS, security and VPN capabilities, as well as full IP routing and MPLS support. From this point of view, BRAS are fully functional routers both at MPLS and at IP layer. Edge routers [81,82] are the routers that assure non-IP traffic adaptation to the IP network and create MPLS labels and tunnels as boundary routers of an MPLS network. The present trend is to incorporate edge router and BRAS functionalities in a single machine, SO creating a high capacity and functional rich new generation BRAS. For this reason, we will concentrate our attention on the new BRAS generation that incorporates also edge routers functionalities. As for core routers, also BRAS have traversed an evolution where three BRAS genera- tions can be identified, while capacity and functionalities were growing in pace with the broadband services penetration. The first BRAS generation was composed by machines where the routing functionalities were implemented by software on a bus-based platform with a single general purpose memory and a single general purpose processor. This kind of BRAS was used to terminate both dial-up and broadband Internet access, where broadband was practically ADSL only. In pace with broadband network evolution, a second generation of BRAS was born imple- mented in hardware and having much higher performances. At the same time, functional scalability was limited as BRAS devices were 