A method of initializing, provisioning, and managing a cable modem and a customer premise equipment device includes sending a customized configuration file to the cable modem. The configuration file contains service provisioning information and further includes information indicative of a network address type for the customer premise equipment device. A message is passed from the cable modem to the customer premise equipment device indicative of the network address type. The customer premise equipment device is provided with a network address in accordance with the network address type indicated in the message. In this way, the customer premise equipment device knows what kind of address to obtain, and excessive transactions are avoided.