[Asterisk-Users] New ENUM service, what do you think?

[Duane]

John Todd wrote:

> I strongly disagree with your summary that TRIP doesn't help the smaller 
> user.  In fact, the reason I'm so strongly an advocate of some type of 
> TRIP development is that it removes the barriers for small entities in 
> the pursuit of better call rates for TDM offload and VoIP 
> interconnection.  Comparative routing data should not be the sole domain 
> of huge telephony firms.

Call rates not calls... Sure the PSTN network is still the most widely 
used for voice calls now, but for how much longer? I'm currently in the 
process of doing a feasibility study and roll out to a large number of 
offices in Australia to route calls between offices using their existing 
DSL connections. Currently the main carrier is going round trying to 
sign everyone up on exclusivity contracts for 2 years for all voice 
calls, for 16c per minute... TRIP won't help there...

> have competing answers to the same question; it MUST have a single 
> answer, no matter how many private ENUM servers you put in the path 

Erm no, we're already working out patches for asterisk to deal with 
multiple answers, including dealing with tel fields in a sane manner...

The whole purpose of TRIP is to route calls via the equivalent of 
carriers, how many of those carriers will let you add your voip records 
to their database and take revenue away from them? TRIP is all about 
centralised control away from the end user, while it might give them 
short term benefits in being able to save a few dollars here and there 
long term they will be locked into using carriers for internet to 
internet calls that they could be making for free.

While enum doesn't have the ability to make cost decisions directly what 
you are suggesting would require everyone to sign up with all providers, 
or have a shared database of user details or some where in between and 
wouldn't that leave the end user open to being slammed? spammed? or many 
other things by companies trying to get ahead?

Like many things in this world they all would work perfectly in theory, 
in practise they end up being abused till people get sick of it and just 
walk away to a simpler system.

> layers of the routing protocol.  Additionally, I am unclear on how you 
> believe that TRIP is involved in "IP routing smarts."  The two are not 
> linked in any way.  Can you clarify?

Sure, internet to internet calls are already paid for in the leasing of 
bandwidth, why pay a phone company to route the call via IP for you when 
it could be done at no additional cost?

> I am uncertain to what your final comments about spam refer.  Neither 
> ENUM nor TRIP address issues of call validation in a realistic manner; 
> any SPF-like methods for verifying origination work equally well with 
> either reference scheme.  Remember that ENUM is a stopgap, and we should 
> do all we can to move away from numbers as an addressing scheme for VoIP 

I don't think it was designed as a stop gap, more likely as a method of 
more easily tracking people with public records that didn't need a 
search warrant to access them...

TRIP is I see it, is a method of routing calls more then working out 
where to send the call to directly. enum points out specifically where 
the call should go and could be used in reverse to find out where the 
call should have come from.

> (or any protocol) delivery.  My SIP phone address is "jtodd at loligo.com" 
> but the only reason most people can't use that is because they are 
> crippled by phones with numeric keypads. ENUM is the in-between method 
> to map numbers to more flexible addressing until we have smarter phones 
> on our desks and we can use the more flexible addressing methods to 
> "dial" the other party.

I don't want something as large as a small laptop to lug around to make 
phone calls with, if you ever do a reasonable amount of SMS'ing you will 
learn how much of a pain in the a** that can be. Using a single number 
as a point of reference to all the contact information on a company or a 
person within a company would be very useful to me.

To send an email I could use his enum number, to contact him via icq I 
could use his enum number, to make a phone call I could use his enum 
number, to fax him I could use his enum number then have the fax machine 
lookup his email address and route the image via that instead.

> As I've said, I am a firm believer in ENUM as a "second-generation" VoIP 
> routing method, but I'm just as firm a believer (due to very hard-won 
> experience in the PBX and carrier markets) that it is insufficient at 
> this time to make any difference at all in anything other than the most 
> theoretical environments, or environments that have been jury-rigged to 
> use ENUM because there was nothing better available.

 From your email you are hinting that TRIP is a stop gap measure between 
pure internet telephony and the PSTN network, I'm suggesting enum is a 
longer term point to point method, while it may seem stop gap in a 
hybrid system long term it will be the best method of the 2, if you 
don't need a company to route calls why give them control of the routing 
information?

-- 
Best regards,
  Duane

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