Patent ID: 8879540

Claim:
A system comprising: an endpoint device, having: a location circuit configured and arranged 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 and arranged to transmit one or more populating data packets, containing the physical location data about the physical location of the endpoint device, to a remote location-determination server; and a location-determination server configured and arranged to: in response to receiving the one or more populating data packets from one of the endpoint device: calculate respective physical locations for one or more nodes in a transmission route between the endpoint device and the location-determination server as a function of the physical location data in the one or more populating data packets and connectivity of the nodes in the transmission route; and store the calculated physical location of the nodes in the transmission route; and in response to an emergency call from a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) device: identify one or more nodes in a transmission route used to send data from the VoIP device; retrieve the stored physical location for the identified nodes; determine a probable physical location for the VoIP device as a function of the stored location data for the identified nodes and a probable location algorithm; and provide the determined probable physical location for the VoIP device to an emergency operator; and wherein the endpoint device is configured and arranged to: transmit a data packet to at least two network access points without establishing a bidirectional communication with the at least two network access points, the data packet including a unique identifier of the endpoint device, and a request for the network access point receiving the request to send a data transmission that includes the unique identifier to the location determination server that is remote from the network access point, and for the network access point to add a respective identifier of the access point to the data transmission; and subsequent to transmission of the data packet, transmit the one or more populating data packets to the location-determination server with information correlating the physical location data in the one or more populating data packets with the unique identifier of the endpoint device.