Patent ID: 7600003

Claim:
A method for configuring a customer premises equipment that is connected to a network of a network service provider, the method comprising the steps of: receiving, at each distributed component among a plurality of distributed components on the network, configuration information from a central configuration unit on the network, wherein the plurality of distributed components is associated with a particular provisioning group of customer premises equipment; maintaining, at each distributed component among the plurality of distributed components, a locally-stored configuration context based on the configuration information, wherein each locally-stored configuration context includes a static portion, an instruction portion, and a validity conditions portion, receiving, at one or more distributed components among the plurality of distributed components, from a particular customer premises equipment within the provisioning group, a request for values of a plurality of configuration parameters that determine network properties for the customer premises equipment; determining, based on utilization data that are associated with each distributed component, a selected distributed component among the plurality of distributed components to process the request; processing the request by generating, at the selected distributed component, a set of values for the plurality of configuration parameters, based on the request and the locally-stored configuration context; and sending the set of values from the selected distributed component to the particular customer premises equipment, and wherein the configuration information includes instructions that cause a processor at the distributed component to perform the step of generating a value of a parameter of the plurality of configuration parameters; and said step of generating the set of values further comprises executing the instructions on the processor.