Patent ID: 7349963

Claim:
A method of identifying a type of Digital Subscriber Line (“DSL”) modem operating at a first end of a DSL system, wherein the DSL system comprises the first end DSL modem coupled to a second end DSL modem by a DSL line, the method comprising: collecting operational data comprising at least one of performance-characterizing data available from a DSL system element management protocol, management level data from the DSL system, data collected from a DSL network management system, data collected from a DSL management entity, and data collected from a DSL management information base; creating a list of candidate DSL modem types; comparing one or more characteristics of the collected operational data to operational data characteristics of known DSL modem types to exclude one or more unavailable DSL modem types from the list of candidate DSL modem types; comparing one or more characteristics of the collected operational data to the operational data characteristics of known DSL modem types to assign scores to available DSL modem types remaining on the list of candidate DSL modem types; and identifying the first end DSL modem type by selecting the available DSL modem type from the remaining list of candidate DSL modem types that has the highest score.