A method for employing an electronic ballast. A distributor is provided with the electronic ballast. An operative parameter of the electronic ballast is configurable to operate a type of gas discharge lamp. The distributor is further provided with a configuration mechanism for configuring said electronic ballast. The electronic ballast is attached to the configuration mechanism, the configuration mechanism is attached to a client computer and the client computer is operatively attached to a configuration service, typically over a wide area network, e.g. Internet. The distributor, using the client computer, requests from the configuration server to configure the ballast. The configuration is performed using the configuration mechanism by transmitting instructions from the configuration server to the client computer in response to the request.