Determining and configuring a communication path in a network

A method is disclosed to determine the topology of a network (600) comprising a master node (602) and one or more slave nodes (614, 618, 622) interconnected using unidirectional data connections (610, 628, 634). The master node (602) makes available data to succeeding nodes and a slave node (622) reads data from a preceding node (618), the read data comprising information of a path from master node to the slave node. A further method is disclosed to configure the path by sending data from the slave node (622) to all nodes on the path via bidirectional data connections (628, 612, 632) between nodes. In a preferred embodiment, a home entertainment system (600) employing HDMI is a suitable network and comprises a presentation component, for example a TV (602), operable to function as the master node; the nodes of the network being interconnected using HDMI cordsets (608, 624, 616). The HDMI specification comprises the DDC bus to support the above mentioned unidirectional data connections(610, 628, 634) and the C