Abstract: A method and a circuit carry out initialization/registration steps for a device, in particular a household appliance, which can be connected to a network. The first initialization/registration of the device is controlled by adding an initialization signal on the actuation of a mechanical circuit device and wherein an address clearly identifying the device in the network is allocated to the device for initialization/registration. In order to carry out the initialization/registration, a control state signal which corresponds to circuit state of circuit device is stored in a flag memory which is associated with the device after the first initialization/registration of the device; after stopping and then restarting the device in the network, the adjusting state of the circuit device is compared to the memory state of the flag memory which corresponds to a determined combination function.