NETWORK ACCESS DEVICE AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATICALLY ESTABLISHING CONNECTION TO A WIDE AREA NETWORK

A network access device (NAD) is configured to automatically establish a connection to a WAN. The NAD tests IP configurations according to a first priority scheme at least until a currently best scoring one of the IP configurations is selected for use to communicate over the WAN. The testing of the IP configurations includes transmitting requests according to a first priority scheme and tracking any replies reflecting which IP configurations are valid. The first priority scheme is for selecting among IP configurations for testing and prioritizing a first type of IP configuration over a dynamically determined type of IP configuration. Which IP configurations of the dynamically determined type that are to be tested are determined by attempting to obtain DHCP leases using different VLAN IDs according to a second priority scheme of VLAN IDs to include in DHCP requests.