In a method for recovering a data rate of an upstream transmission having rising edge transitions and falling edge transitions, an upstream transmission is coupled into a plurality of register banks, each register bank adapted to oversample the upstream transmission at a different phase offset of a clock signal. An edge transition state is determined for each of the register banks, each edge transition state corresponding to either a rising edge transition or a falling edge transition in the upstream transmission over a clock cycle. The edge transition states of the register banks are analyzed to determine a sampling point of the clock signal for sampling the upstream transmission. The upstream transmission may be transmitted through multiple data rate recovery circuits each operating at a different clock rate, for determining the optimal sampling point and the original data rate of the upstream transmission.