[AusNOG] M2 buy Primus

[Rod Veith]

Hi Mark,

I think we're largely in agreement though I do care what about the 'vector'
I use. Would be interesting in market research on what most people think.

My views and use of end user technology will undoubtedly change with the
technology however with present day technology part of the reason why I care
is due to user interface issues, device operation and the content/message I
want to send. Voice mails tend to rely on someone retrieving the message,
while texting goes straight to a mobile handset. Email is better for
communicating considered and prepared thoughts/ideas, record keeping and
record retrieval. Conversation is great for discussing ideas, Q/A sessions
leading down different paths etc. Have you never been in an email
conversation that took two weeks because business managers or the other
party didn't want to 'talk' to you?  Whereas a simple 10 min phone call
would have fixed the issue straight away!

"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."               Not so. It depended a lot on what platforms the
business applications were written. As data sharing/interlinking become a
business issue, converting from one to the other platform was a headache for
the IT managers (at least the ones I dealt with). 

" 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."         Nah, search engines won't make a call to my son's mobile.

Number/identifer portability is important. And it will need to do different
things depending on the use being made of it. I don't particularly care if
it SIP indial, PSTN indial or something else. A receiver needs to have
multiple incoming "identifers" and doesn't really care how it happens. But
this is where ENUM or whatever we call it is important, the technology needs
to be told a 'destination' and either deliver a message or open
communications with that destination.  

Rod


-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Newton [mailto:newton at atdot.dotat.org] 
Sent: Monday, 16 April 2012 3:37 PM
To: Rod Veith
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] M2 buy Primus

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