[asterisk-users] "Fixing the Caller-ID Problem", by John Todd for O'ReillyNet

[John Marvin]

Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 01:00:18PM -0400, Henry.L.Coleman wrote:

>> My position is that there are only two reasons for wanting to change an
>> outbound CID:
>> 1. to deceive the called party
>> 2. to validate the calling party
>>
>> I don't know how much notice people take of CID but obviously if if it can
>> be used to mis-represent or for fraudulant purposes then it will become
>> useless.
> 
> People take *lots* of note of it, or they wouldn't be thinking about a
> bill.
> 
> As far as I'm concerned, the issue just now is "can I trust the CNID
> handed to me by my LEC on my PSTN connection".  That is, and really,
> can only remain, the province of the LEC's and IXC's that send calls
> there.  Firewalling incoming CNID from PRI's and VoIP carriers is the
> business of people who accept incoming end-user calls; it has to be
> done there in a network architected the way the PSTN is.

There seems to be an underlying assumption here that each outgoing call 
is always tied to an incoming phone number. This isn't always true for 
the PSTN, and it is certainly not true for voip.

For my home Asterisk setup I have a single PSTN line, and then I use a 
variety of different voip providers. I use two different providers for 
my DID's (one toll free, and one normal). I use yet a different provider 
for terminating outgoing calls.

So, when making an outgoing call via voip, what number should I use to 
identify myself? I currently use the number of my PSTN line, since that 
is our "public"  inbound number.

If you have your way, what kind of controls would be put in place? Each 
voip provider would have to verify that I have the right to use a 
particular number, even if that number isn't provided by that provider? 
How would they know if I got rid of it? Would I even be allowed to do 
what I am doing now? How much is this going to cost the voip termination 
providers to properly administer this?

John