more on ITU or ICANN - a case story from Denmark

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker () bbiw net>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 07:17:15 -0800
To: <dave () farber net>, Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] ITU or ICANN - a case story from Denmark

Dave,

It sounds as if the current ENUM administration is working exactly as
intended... and exactly as needed.

I suspect the real problem is that the innovators feel the need to be too
bureaucratic, themselves.

Here's why...


>   From: Frode Greisen <frode () greisen net>
....
>   Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 12:17:38 +0100
>   There is an agreement between the ITU and the IESG that the RIPE NCC runs
>   the top level domain but requests to operate county domains must go to ITU-T
>   which forwards the request to the country telecom regulator for decision.

Telephone number administration is a well-established global infrastructure
service.  ENUM is specified as a direct extension to it.  This means that
assignment of numbers that are the official DNS instantiation of the PSTN
E.164 number MUST be fully coordinated with the existing E.164 assignment
agencies.  And this means that anyone seeking to administer a national ENUM
registry MUST incur the overhead and approval of the E164 national
regulatory agency bureaucracy.

For what it's worth, I suspect some of these national agencies would be open
to having "experimental" administration using special procedures, during
initial operation of an official E.164 ENUM national registry. But, of
course, this depends upon the laws and policies governing operation of the
individual national registries.

Concern about coordination with PSTN national registries received
considerable discussion and debate during the ENUM development.  The
potential for serious problems is real.

However, none of this prevents parallel innovation...


On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 08:20:09 -0500, David Farber wrote:
>   From: Kevin Murphy <kmurphy () datamonitor com>
...   
>   There have been a number of proposals to do commercial ENUM in a top-level
>   domain, by launching a domain such as .tel, with ICANN's consent.


The problem, here, is thinking that a top-level domain is necessary.  The
right-hand portion of the domain name merely needs to be a constant.

ANY initial domain name will suffice, as long as there is agreement to use
it.  

It is probably correct to worry that a .tel standard string will create
confusion with the PSTN-coordated administration. We humans are so easily
confused. Hence it is probably BETTER to have a string that is a tad
awkward, from the standpoint of human reading.  That way people will know
that it is an independent effort.

So go agree to use some third-level string.

ANY third-level string.

I would be happy to assign e164.mipassoc.org to a consortium of
administrators.  Lots of other DNS administrators for existing sub-domains
would be equally happy to provide a path, I'm sure.


d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
+1.408.246.8253
dcrocker  a t ...
WE'VE MOVED to:  www.bbiw.net



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