[Asterisk-Users] Re: quasi-skype channel for Asterisk?

[Martin List-Petersen]

On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 08:32, Duane wrote:
> The fact is without some form or centralisation or checks and balances 
> you can't trust anyone outside your little ring of immediate friends. 
> This means that dundi will only be useful for voip providers and 
> enterprise wanting an easish way to distribute their dialing plan, it 
> won't be useful in the medium to long term for the general public.

I do agree, that it is exactly the place where DUNDi is most
interesting. Peering between ITSP's and dialplan distribution inside
companies.

> What's more the decentralised nature means each call probes every 
> server, so instead of probing one server and getting an authorative 
> response it could be bounced across the entire network for every call, 
> short term this would have no impact, what about 1 billion calls, or 10 
> billion calls, potentially there could be more traffic for finding 
> numbers then actually voice calls.

Actually not, because you are only querying the servers nearest yourself
in the peering ring, also the numbers are cached for a while, so once
you made the lookup, the next one won't go that far. (That's how i
understood the priciple, correct me, if i'm wrong).

> The other point that could be made is about potential adoption by the 
> wider community, currently enum has been adopted in many devices and 
> software, and many companies already run it internally, I doubt they'd 
> suddenly drop it to adopt asterisk and a protocol that may get more hype 
> then use.

I don't think that dns based enum will disappear, each of the protocols
have their good and bad sides. I personally would like to see some
interface between the two, that would allow, as example in a company: to
use dundi inside the company and have a gateway to dns based e164, that
can be restricted only to export part of that dundi dialplan.

Also DUNDi clearly shows, where Digium's main target is: in PABX'es.
Exactly the same as IAX and the IAXy. It is their main target marked.

That is why many ITSP's haven't switched to IAX for their customers.
Asterisk itself is not that easy to make redundant and also you don't
necesssarily want the mediastream, which you need to, if you want to do
billing with IAX.

> Finally people will be mightily ticked off in future if geographically 
> representing numbers is no more, others and myself have had numerous 
> calls at 3am coming in via fat finger dialing/wrong numbers, if the cost 
> is reduced and there is no easy way to distinguish where a person in 
> relation to their time zone then this trend will only increase. Another 
> similar example in Australia is the fact that mobile phone numbers 
> aren't geographical based, this of course let the telcos charge crap 
> loads for calls but that's another matter, but people often call wrong 
> numbers and get someone on the opposite side of the country without 
> realising it. For another kicker, the main telco used to charge by distance.

Sorry, but geographically or not, people never really think about it,
when they call other people.

In general most people actually never think, before they act. Having
been dealing with support for years (technical and non-technical)
nothing wonders you anymore.

Ok, once you start putting the international code in front of the
phonenumber, because you dial outside your country, it makes a bit more
difference, but not really. Because most people can't even imagine the
difference, because they look outside and see, it's light.

Geographically based numbers have never changed that. There are other
ways to enforce that. It's just a matter of building services or
phonedevices, that actually reflect the matter of fact, if you care
about things like that. Using asterisk you should be in the best
position to change that. Simply don't let your phones ring, when go to
sleep. This can be done automatically or manual. It's your choice.

> I'm not advocating the ITU or any other telcos, but the fact is numbers 
> are a good way of co-existing with almost every other phone on the 
> planet at this point in time, rather then trying to make existing 
> infrastructure fit in with geek idealism. However DNS makes a good, 
> scalable flat file database, it is already implemented in a lot of 
> devices/software and it just plain works.

I do agree, that things should be kept as simple as possible. And
numbers are a universal language. I can't read every language, but i can
read numbers, at least in nearly every language.

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
Dublin, Eire
http://www.marlow.dk/