Lets try and unpack this a bit.
RIPE is responsible for issuing IP addresses, IP addresses are designed to enable connected devices to communicate using IP packets between switches and routers to reach from the sender to the intended receiver, this is an underlying transport mechanism
for all data to be transmitted and in ways that we can reach that destination or by alternate means should the initial route have a link fail or congestion - it was designed in a way to maintain baseline communications in the event of a network failure or
war way back when.
Now as humans we are not very good at remembering numbers, as such DNS allowed for domain names www.domain.com to map to IP addresses so that you could through a Domain Name Server (DNS) type the more memorable name which would map to the correct IP address
which would then enable requests or data to be sent there. This then allowed for user@domain.name for individual messaging (email) though I am a little young to know if the order of things was this way (DNS then email).
So now we can find websites and send messages, hey why not collaborate in real time and not just read static webpages and send email? Along came the likes of voice and video over the Internet, but not everyone had access and we relied on phones from traditional
telecommunications providers over the PSTN at a $ per minute charging regime. With the growing IP/Data network reach and improvements in IP reliability and quality of service, receiving reliable communications in real time became a reality but what should
we use to make that call? Surely we should have a system that can take advantage of free calls where we can have IP connectivity and failing that some way to still have the call go over the PSTN network if its not connected to the IP network or there are
issues on the IP network such as congestion, jitter or latency that would not support such calls. Hence the birth of the IP-PBX (telecommunication industry solution) and the birth of VoIP and Video over IP (Internet industry). These have pretty much converged
with the majority of customers moving away from PABX to IP Telephony and Video. So we have H.323 which uses a hierarchy of gatekeepers to route telephone numbers to destinations for VoIP/Video calling in the same way I described earlier to some extent for
IP numbers in the IP world, and more recently we have SIP which takes the more memorable form of an email address using DNS (mentioned earlier) to route calls over a mapped IP addressed to make calls that way too. Now the formats present issues from a usability
view, its easier to dial a phone number on your phone or mobile and probably easier to type a SIP address on a soft VoIP/Video client on a laptop and maybe easiest to use an IP address for a room enabled video end point but we need flexibility here to cater
for all, hence the binding of ENUM to allow all three modes to operate so you should not have to care which way you want to dial your call. All the underlying querying and routing typically happens using Infrastructure ENUM which maintains large lists of
numbers that can be routed to their destinations which may like H.323 follow a hierarchy of ENUM like resolvers within a root tree format or from direct DNS based queries (are you still with me here?).
So what I am trying to explain here is how our forms of communications have changed depending on the nature of the communication and the application available. I am not going to even attempt to get into the latest social media like forms than to say these
are like Skype and tend to be islands, you need to be part of the cohort by registering and then you can go and seek out your friends or contacts and connect with them to establish application layer like communities to collaborate with in a rich media way.
Now you can see that we have many layers built up over time, luckily we've not seen any layers giving way, at best we see some telecommunications carriers complain that they have to pay for all the physical infrastructure whilst Facebook, Skype, twitter,
snap chat and others ride "over the top" to skim the revenues largely through advertising and premium services and the handset phablet makers make a nice profit from both the infrastructure and the applications and content too.
So my understanding of these discussions and attempts to bring folks together cross domain are that there may be a concern that the Internet is not as organised or indexed based searchable as we would like it to be to find people and know it really is
them and not an impersonator, to communicate in easy and various ways and to share and find content easily to empower true research and education leaps beyond traditional serendipity. Having such a system and standards may also allow for metrics on the value
and effectiveness of content and services in use which has led to growth in business analytics and intelligence.
But who would and should set standards and would that stifle creativity? We've seen time and again that if there is one thing for sure, the online world we operate in will find a smarter, better or simply a work around to anything. See Data Warehousing
for Corporate Data, great way to organise but with the growth of sources and formats of data its not agile and is expensive and has led to Hadoop and fluid number crunching analysis of speech and video to text, social media streams and traditional data sources
mixed together to produce new insights and the rise of the data scientist. I remain a little sceptical about that because to infer that we delivered a much complex interwoven analysis of real time data to produce market research that was then acted on and
this produced a better business outcomes is debatable. In terms of the level of contribution to the outcome, could it have happened solely as a result of the action and not the result and interpretation that led to the action? Ah maybe we are about to see
the rise of the social scientist and philosopher?
So as I wrap up here my final thoughts are where are we headed in this internet connected world that serves up more data than ever in many new ways, consuming content and automating decisions, well IMHO we need to remain mindful of the knowledge is power
element, this is where privacy and personal data and regulation comes into play but we need to balance that with the great creativity that can really change our world for the forces of good too but how can we measure this being effective when its so easy to
fall into complexity and distraction? So as I continue to wander in and out of that detail lets ask ourselves the following
1. What is the problem we are trying to solve with global virtual numbering and why?
2. Do we want to achieve an iterative organic way forward or something more radical/game changing, why?
3. What would success translate to you, then work backwards to form a plan maybe?
4. Is Indexing that important, please ask your librarian as I would love to know and be corrected.
Have a great weekend folks and I hope this email provides some thought and context around these discussions, if I've completely misinterpreted what has been written in the thread and I sorry and follow that up by saying can you please explain again some
other way :-)
OK, Thanks Rui/peter/james/alex/victor/all,
I can see we're talking at cross purposes. The main thing, throughout all of
this enum stuff, is to encourage/force some interoperability between various
vendor's (let's call them) 'unified messaging' solutions. If that's not the
primary problem/challenge, could someone tell me what is?
In the first instance, we should have no interest in the technical
considerations. We should just look at the potential market and figure out
how, if we we're able to come up with an approach which pulled a market, any
private vendor would want to jump on it.
So let me illustrate the potential market. I.e. global groups. To be clear.
"Groups" tend to fall into these three divisions.
We can see that there have been many discussions about ENUM going on around
various domains for many years. E.g.
So that's one indication of one global conversation, around some piece of
Research, which takes place, in different languages, in hundreds of domains,
at any one time. Even when these researchers get together at conferences,
their records are buried around various institutional and association web
sites. We all know that because, since the web was invented, we can all see
it.
In the case of RIPE, we will discover what its institutional peers have in
common only by reading documents which are buried on some other (higher
This is not an unusual situation. Everyone within some sphere of practice is
siloed, and often try and overcome their limitation by inventing another
institution, domain, & web site. And keeping the same discussions separate.
While this fragmentation of effort is now obvious, we have librarians who,
because the limit themselves to manhandling information/papers/journals (and
ignore Communications solutions as studiously as Communications technicians
ignore their needs) must pay publishers to aggregate journals on behalf of
global (peer) groups.
Bringing it down to our present situation. Our BOF, at this terena domain,
have our enum discussion, which will have no record unless the elist has an
archive. So while James will suggest the OVCC guys have an interest in our
discussion, and I point to the Ripe enum group, and Peter I am sure will
have some interested parties inside Geant and Dante, there is simply nowhere
in domain in cyberspace we might all look to as a spot where other
communities with an interest in ENUM might reside, or have resided. The
demands for collaboration are obvious, and we all have ideas about real time
& asynchronous tools, But that's not important until we have some means of
finding our global peers, or peers who might have proceeded us in the same
inquiry.
If you consider a solution to this problem, You'll be thinking (perhaps, in
terms of a new TLD, say) .research. Or using an existing domain like .edu.
Regardless, if you are a librarian it will be quite an obvious thing to
consider using an old classification scheme for the domain. What is, using
is just as recognizable to a (dewey) librarian as www.025.431.com
Now the only shortfall of this approach, using six numbers, is that it can
only define 999,999 virtual domains. But it's strength is that these become
not just pointers to a million transitional domains, but long term archives
in their own right. It's the policies, which are made for the use of virtual
rooms - interoperable, open source, open access, IPv6, etc - where the real
influence resides. A Global user group doesn't get issued one unless they
agree.
So you might understand. I don't see the domain being issued by network, or
service, operators. They get issued by librarians.
If we get that far, we'll need a prefix to be tacked on to a room's number,
so people can dial in to a room/conference, using the PSTN, without
incurring toll charges.
I hope that scopes the concept clearly.
All the best, si
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013 6:14 PM
To: 'Simon Fenton-Jones'; 'James Sankar'
Quemada'
Subject: RE: [discussion] Re: Global Virtual Numbering
Hi all,
{{
Something like this would be possible:
00 ### @ %%%%%%%%
00 ### @@ %%%%%%%
00 ### @@@ %%%%%%
00 ### @@@@ %%%%%
00 ### @@@@@ %%%%
Can't figure out why we'd need a network number though.
}}
I see two reasons upfront:
1. TERENA (or NRENum.net admins) don't have the structure to delegate
directly every block.
2. Organizations (NRENs, PCMG's*, ...) will want to delegate some blocks on
their own or "transpose" their current numbering into the "global tree".
* PCMG's = entities like: Polycom, Cisco, Microsoft, Google, ...
Rui Ribeiro
Gestor Serviço Técnico de Vídeo
GEANT3 - SA3 - T4, eduCONF Leader
FCCN
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-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2013 8:47 PM
To: Rui Ribeiro; 'Alex Galhano Robertson'
'Simon Fenton-Jones'; 'Peter Szegedi'
Subject: Re: [discussion] Re: Global Virtual Numbering
Dear All
I know that this issue is a common one in the commercial world and has the
added complexity of providing revenues to justify investment. The Open
Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC) are working with carriers, managed
service providers, video vendors and supporting service providers to do just
that. Given we seem to be redefining the objectives and goal it may make
sense to gain an insight into the issues and challenges that the OVCC face
so that we can take that effort and any learnings into account. If this
would be of value I can organise OVCC leaders in the technical WG to meet
via video.
Best wishes
James Sankar
Hi Alex,
{{
I insist, we need to clearly define our objectives with this global
numbering plan.
}}
IMHO, we need a way to allow addressing of IP voice and video terminals
within the global numbering plan that is widely used, without the
restrictions of the current numbering plan.
Restrictions = number associated with phone service.
{{
- We want to integrate videoconference and telephony services.
}}
True.
{{
- We want a number-only global addressing scheme. No alfabetic characters.
}}
"In the future", URI dialing will be the way. I think that we all
acknowledge that. But, for the moment, numbers are needed and the
correct approach to "route" numbers into URIs is using ENUM. Yes, I
would look for a "number-only global addressing scheme".
{{
- We want it to be "E.164 compilant", so we could call from any
videophone or even any standard phone.
}}
There is a subtle thing that is mixed on this sentence. First, yes, we
should be E.164 compliant, as this would promote integration with the
current PSTN network and ease future integration. The other thing is to
make a call... I would like, but it isn't a MUST today, to be able to
dial from a
(pstn) phone to these "number-only global addressing scheme". "In the
future", if we are an extension of e.164, then it would be easy for
operators to route calls from their terminals/phones.
{{
- The translation to URI will be done by NRENum.net.
}}
Yes.
{{
0- Do we really need virtual numbers?
IMHO, we dont need it. At least, the majoroty of our NRENs does not
need it.
But we want it because some countries (its universities and even NRENs)
have dificulties to obtain real telephone numbers and make this real
numbers the addres of its videoconference rooms.
}}
True. Look at the wider picture and think of other service providers
that, already promote V&V services within their own numbering plan.
What if there was an global service that would accommodate these
numbers/networks?
{{
As the answer is "we want it", let´s go on with other questions...
}}
Ok. ;-)
{{
1- What we should address?
A- people: our office deskphone or our personal videoconference
software
B- groups: group of deskphones
C- video resources: MCU rooms, physical room "CODECs", Webconf rooms
(if we can make it interoperate, etc)
D- all above
I think letter C is the correct one, because we already have one
telephone number on our business cards. And it is easy to map those
addresses on NRENum.net. It is already done for most of us, I think.
}}
Option "E" - All of the above and whatever comes up next! Numbers are
just numbers... they will then be used for whatever purpose people
wants to use them. We should not block their usage upfront by saying
"only to be used by physical terminals". There should be rules about
the quality of the records, but other than that, we should promote
innovation of services.
{{
3- How should the scheme be?
A- Hierarchical and country code dependent?
B- Flat, non-hierarchical, independent on any existing coutry code
I think this is the key question to be answered!
It would be much easier if we choose leter A. It is already done for
most of us.
But some people prefer the first choice: flat and CC independent.
}}
If A is chosen, there will be three problems:
1. (must!) exist country organization to take care of the service with
all the problems associated with it: uptake, different rules, business
case, politics, ...
2. bigger numbers (at least more 3 digits...) 3. doesn't solve supra
national entities/networks.
I'm in favor of B, but based on the concept of networks. There should
be a "world wide registry" for these networks and then there will be
registrys to take part of those numbers. Of course NRENs could apply to
take care of the CC code, if they want to, but this would open up the
management outside country boundaries. For instance, on eduCONF, the
numbering that we aim is supra national, where should it be placed on a
CC code hierarchy. Where should, for instance,
Polycom/Cisco/Microsoft/Google register costumers?
(please don't flame me on these reference to companies (PCMG). They are
a big part of the videoconference ecosystem, preparing the model to
allow them to enter is, IMHO, a wise decision)
{{
If we decide for option B, I would like to make some other questions
about that IPv4 aproach I proposed a few days ago.
}}
We could use a "network" prefix to that kind of numbering... just like
any other network (educonf, country's nren, PCMG, ...) it would be
interesting because it could be registration free and hassle free. In
fact most of it would be able to be automatically assigned. But it
isn't a
"silver bullet"
to solve the issue because many terminals are behind nat and you can't
address all the terminals these way.
Again... the wide/open the model, the more distinct and innovative the
options will be.
{{
1- How many NRENs or Universities are using NATed IP addresses in its
MCUs?
As H.323 and SIP is not so good with NAT, I dare say no NAT and no
private IP addresses (10/8, 172.16/12 or 192.168/16) are been used for
these video resources.
}}
Many... most (if not all!) of our VoIP network is behind an SBC that is
the only "public" IP address known on the open network. H.323 is even
less good transversing NAT, nevertheless there are many using that
architecture.
{{
2- How many of these video resources are using IPv6?
Who has today an MCU using just IPv6?
When do you plan to remove IPv4 from these devices?
}}
There are IPv6 resources available, all Cisco (Cisco, Tandberg, Codian)
products are IPv6 enabled. Others like Radvision, Lifesize and Polycom
are taking major steps. There are some NRENs that are providing the
service in IPv6.
Of course there isn't a date to remove IPv4. The question, is when will
it be impossible to add terminals to the IPv4 network. When it happens,
we need to be prepared.
As final comment:
The structure that I propose is something like:
00{INP}{NP}{NUMBER}
INP = Internet Number Prefix CC (as "883", or something similar...) NP
= Network Prefix to be assigned by the global registry. It could be
from
1 digit to 5 digits (?). Where NP that are equal to E.164 CC could be
reserved to NRENs or regulators of those countries.
NUMBER = extension number within the network addressed by {NP}. The
total number should not be longer than 14(?) digits.
Something like this would be possible:
00 ### @ %%%%%%%%
00 ### @@ %%%%%%%
00 ### @@@ %%%%%%
00 ### @@@@ %%%%%
00 ### @@@@@ %%%%
Eventually the INP should be just 1 digit, but that would send us to
another "numbering war". ;-)
This structure would allow us to delegate about 40k networks...
Rui
Rui Ribeiro
Gestor Serviço Técnico de Vídeo
GEANT3 - SA3 - T4, eduCONF Leader
FCCN
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