[AusNOG] M2 buy Primus

[Mark Newton]

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 03:20:29PM +1000, Rod Veith wrote:

 > Re: Universal ENUM.
 > It doesn't really matter if it is a number or name.

It does if we're talking about enum :)

 > The concept of one
 > identifier is what is important. Plus type of contact requested. Do u want
 > to talk to the person in real-time, send them a text message, a voice
 > message, an email, content (photo, document etc), or text chat.

I see them all as user-interface issues.

I'm not sure that the upcoming generation of users really care 
about which of those vectors they use either. They're just as
happy to continue a conversation via an SMS every 6 seconds as
they are via the spoken word.  Facebook chat is indistinguishable
from Facebook messages which are indistinguishable from email.
Communications facilities *and* use-cases are both separately and
simultaneously converging.

(what's the difference between a voicemail message, a voice recording
carried by MMS, or an email message with an MP3 MIME attachment?
Answer: The user interface abstracts the differences away; they're
all "Send my voice to someone else" techniques, and the end user
doesn't need to know which one their pricing-model-aware handset
chooses to use to facilitate their communication needs)

I'm not sure that "the concept of one identifier" is as important
as you think, too. Do end users actually care?

 > The issue has been the different underlying technologies. Remember the
 > EBCDIC and ASCII issues in the early days. Messaging (telephony, texting,
 > email etc) is like EBCDIC and ASCII in the 1970s.

I'm not so sure.  The only reason EBCDIC vs ASCII happened was
because there were people who felt strongly about whether EBCDIC
or ASCII was the best answer.

Now we say, "I don't care, send me whatever you want," and use
a user interface abstraction layer to make them both look like
text on a page.

 > Once the world goes fully
 > IP or has decent, flexible and cost- effective IP gateways, the ENUM will
 > come,

Nope, I think it's already obsolete.  The problem it was supposed
to solve has been solved by search engines.



As an aside:  If number portability is actually important, how about
a "SIP" address family for BGP4?  Route a new 100 number range to
your PABX by having it announce 61885551200/9, and port individual
numbers by announcing more-specific prefixes :)

   - mark