Patent ID: 8401003

Claim:
For use in providing emergency services in response to a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) endpoint device having circuitry that stores a Media Access Control (MAC) identifier for a packet-communicating device which is subject to changing and stores a Wide Area Network (WAN) address for the packet-communicating device, and that has an interface for communication over the Internet via the packet-communicating device, a circuit-implemented method for prompting a VoIP user to update physical location data associated with the VoIP endpoint device, the method comprising: in response to a power state transition, determining a current WAN address by one of: obtaining an Internet Protocol (IP) address of one of the packet-communicating device and a local gateway connected to the packet-communicating device; and obtaining, in response to a determination that the current WAN address is in a private range of (IP) addresses, an IP address of a subsequent node in a packet transmission path originating from the endpoint device; and in response to the power state transition and the circuitry detecting a change in at least one of the stored WAN address and the stored MAC identifier, generating an output from the circuitry to facilitate an update of the physical location data associated with a VoIP host server via the VoIP endpoint device.