Patent ID: 8422986

Claim:
A system comprising: a plurality of endpoint devices each having a location circuit configured to provide physical location data about the physical location of the endpoint device; one or more external ports for communicating data to an external network; and a processing circuit configured to generate one or more populating data packets containing the physical location data; and transmit the populating data packets to a remote location-determination server; and at least one location-determination server configured to receive the populating data packets from the plurality of endpoint devices; determine nodes in a transmission route between the plurality of endpoint devices and the location-determination server; calculate a physical location for one or more of the determined nodes as a function of the physical location data in the populating data packets; store the calculated physical location for the one or more of the determined nodes; identify, in response to an emergency request from an emergency-capable endpoint device without bidirectional audio capabilities, one or more nodes in a transmission route used to send data from the emergency-capable endpoint device; retrieve calculated physical location data for the identified nodes; determine a probable physical location for the emergency-capable endpoint device as a function of the calculated physical location data for the identified nodes and a probable location algorithm; provide the determined probable physical location for the emergency-capable endpoint device to an emergency operator; and establish a non-audio communications link between the emergency operator and the emergency-capable endpoint device.