Whether the terminal device is a VoIP softphone 104 or a VoIP telephone 106, the terminal device is connected to the IP network 102 via a networking standard such as Ethernet, Bluetooth, IEEE 1394 (also known as ???Firewire???), IEEE 802.11 (also known as ???WiFi???), or networking over serial communication channels such as the Universal Serial Bus (i.e., ???USB???).