Patent ID: 8108500

Claim:
A method for selecting a resultant mode of operation for at least two modems that communicate via a communications network, comprising: (a) performing a handshake procedure to determine a set of possible modes of operation supported by the at least two modems, the set of possible modes of operation including protocol standards and annexes that are supported by the at least two modems; (b) selecting a first set of favorable modes of operation from among the set of possible modes of operation using a first level of priority-based selection based on priorities assigned to the annexes; (c) selecting a second set of favorable modes of operation from among the first set of favorable modes of operation using a second level of priority-based selection based on priorities assigned to the protocol standards; and (d) in case there exist two or more second favorable modes of operation from among the second set of favorable modes of operation, performing a probing-based selection by evaluating respective performances of each of the second favorable modes of operation and selecting a second favorable mode of operation with a best performance from among the second set of favorable modes as the resultant mode of operation.