A method of initializing a multi-zone peer-to-peer entertainment and communications network. During normal network operation, data is streamed from one or more entertainment media source nodes to multiple independent other nodes and, then, passed to connected receivers and/or transceivers. The receivers and transceivers may be located in different zones from each other. The zones may be different rooms in a building or house. The initialization sequence is an autonomous process. During initialization, at least one backplane address is assigned to each network hub port and to each local node. One hub port is designated as backplane master. Upon power-up or a reset, a remote scan is initiated, automatically, from the hub ports to the remote nodes. Any remote node requiring an address responds to the remote scan indicating that one or more addresses are needed. Then, nodes requesting addresses enter a contention arbitration phase to select the next requesting node which is assigned addresses next. Addresses are assigned to the remote mode nodes, giving priority according to serial number, lowest to highest. Each remote node acquires addresses from the hub backplane master which tie the particular remote node to the hub backplane. The backplane master manages the initialization process, providing addresses to each of the other remote nodes, as required.