Abstract: In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, a customer premises equipment (CPE) includes a memory unit, a communications unit, and a processing unit. The memory unit stores and retrieves a plurality of network addresses, including a default server network address corresponding to a default server. The communications unit can send messages to and receive messages from a plurality of servers over a communications network. Each server is specified by a unique network address. The processing unit determines if a configuration server network address is present within the memory unit. If the configuration server network address is not present within the CPE the processing unit retrieves the default server network address from the memory unit and sends a configuration server network address request message through the communications unit to the default server requesting the configuration server network address.