Patent ID: 7769021

Claim:
A method for providing automatic fail-over service for premises equipment that is accessing a network via a first network access medium, the fail-over service providing fail-over of the access of the premises equipment from the first network access medium to a second network access medium, the method comprising the steps of: measuring, at a location remote from the premises equipment, a current QoS metric of at least one of the first and second network access media including receiving at the remote location responses to network pings, the network pings being transmitted from the remote location through the network to the premises equipment, the responses being transmitted from the premises equipment through the network to the remote location; and based on the QoS metric, transmitting a message to the premises equipment to cause the premises equipment to change from accessing the network via the first network access medium to accessing the network via the second network access medium; wherein the location remote from the subscriber is connected through the network to the premises equipment.