Patent ID: 7483419

Claim:
A method, implemented by customer premises equipment (CPE), for automatically and remotely determining a digital subscriber line (DSL) intermediate layer protocol of a head end of a DSL link between the CPE and the head end, wherein the CPE and the head end each have a protocol stack comprising an intermediate layer located below a transport layer and above a DSL layer, the method comprising the steps of: (a) attempting to initiate a DSL connection over the DSL link to the head end using a selected intermediate layer protocol; (b) determining whether the selected intermediate layer protocol is the intermediate layer protocol of the head end based on results of step (a); (c) when the selected intermediate layer protocol is not the intermediate layer protocol of the head end, then selecting an other intermediate layer protocol and repeating steps (a) and (b); and (d) when the selected intermediate layer protocol is the intermediate layer protocol of the head end, then (i) saving the selected intermediate layer protocol for use in configuring the CPE and (ii) optimizing physical layer settings for the CPE configured with the selected intermediate layer protocol, wherein optimizing the physical layer settings comprises the steps of: (1) attempting to initiate a DSL connection over the DSL link to the head end using the selected intermediate layer protocol at each transmit gain level in a sequence of different transmit gain levels; (2) determining whether physical and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) layers are up for each different transmit gain level; (3) when the physical and ATM layers are up for a particular transmit gain level, then recording the physical layer settings for the particular transmit gain level; and (4) optimizing the physical layer settings by selecting a best connect rate for the different transmit gain levels.