Patent ID: 7409461

Claim:
A method of obtaining routing information by a client component, in a broadband communications system comprising a subscriber-data-processing system and at least one content-provider-data-processing system, and said subscriber-data-processing system includes a client component of a broadband-access program, the method comprising: establishing at least one Point to Point over Ethernet (PPPoE) session between said subscriber-data-processing system and said at least one content-provider-data-processing system; retrieving a file from a predetermined server, said file containing routing information in a predetermined data format and having a version identifier, the routing information effective to access said at least one content-provider-data-processing system, the file maintained by at least one content-provider; parsing said file to extract said routing information; populating a routing table on said subscriber-data-processing system based on said routing information; periodically polling said file from said predetermined server in order to re-retrieve said file; and repopulating said routing table based on said routing information re-retrieved by periodic polling when said version identifier of said re-retrieved file is different than said version identifier used in populating said routing table.