Patent ID: 7356136

Claim:
A method of identifying an internet telephony provisioning entity to an internet telephony device, the method comprising: storing a pre-provisioning contact and a unique device ID number in a non-volatile memory of the internet telephony device, receiving a provisioning contact of a provisioning entity assigned to the device at a pre-provisioning server and storing the provisioning contact in association with a unique device ID number assigned to the device; receiving an inquiry initiated from the device to the pre-provisioning server at the pre-provisioning contact, the inquiry comprising the unique ID number assigned to the device; responding to the inquiry with a response that includes the provisioning contact that was stored in association with the unique device ID number of the device; and wherein the steps of receiving an inquiry and the step of responding to the inquiry are performed over a hyper text transport protocol link initiated by the device to the pre-provisioning server; and wherein the step of storing the provisioning contact in conjunction with the unique device ID number comprises: writing the unique device ID number to a key field of a record in a look-up table; and writing the provisioning contact to a binary object field of the record in the look-up table.