IP: "DeJure ENUM, F.500, and Lessons Learned" -- by Tony Rutkowski

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

DeJure ENUM, F.500, and Lessons Learned
by Anthony M. Rutkowski*


For those folks who have been around the telecom and
computer information fields prior to the past seven
years or so, the current formal ENUM directions are
taking some familiar turns.  Indeed, the parallels of
players, institutions, and schema are striking similar
to one of the most costly and complete failures in
information networking history - that revolved around
"The Directory."

The Directory was a central feature of a monumental
standards making effort initially begun in the early
1980s as part of a kind of parallel universe to the
Internet known as Open Systems Interconnection or OSI.

During the 1980s, up until the mid-90s when it
disappeared off the world radar screen like a
plummeting rocket into oblivion, OSI consumed tens of
thousands of meeting days and millions of pages of
paper in a dozen different government-approved
standards bodies around the world.  OSI was supposed to
define by government fiat the way all telecom and
computer networking was to have occurred from the most
trivial circuit connection to entire national network
architectures and service provisioning arrangements.


THE ORIGINS OF F.500

Today, telecommunication and information systems
standards typically take the form of specifications or
protocols developed in diverse forums that are taken by
entrepreneurs and implemented in the marketplace in
form of products and services.  Some products, services
and providers are successful; many are unsuccessful.
The marketplace ultimately determines the winners and
losers.

In some cases, however, industry and governmental
institutions attempt to manipulate the marketplace by
giving some products and services special status.  In
the more extreme cases, they actually attempt to
establish new regulated monopoly or government
provisioning schemas that are imposed on the
marketplace.

In the old monopoly-oriented provisioning universe of
telecoms, their international organization, the ITU,
developed the specifications and protocols in various
"series" of recommendations.  For example, modem
standards are part of the familiar V-Series
specifications for data communication devices via
the telephone network.

In many instances in the past, the protocol
specifications were complemented with F-Series
standards intended to formally established a particular
uniform global provisioning schema.  Here the
representatives of monopoly telecoms operators
worldwide sat around a table and specified what users
would and would not receive as "public services" in
minute detail.

In many cases, these F-Series provisions were in turn
complemented by D-Series accounting and tariffing
schema that specified the basis for charging users for
services, and how the revenue was to be tabulated and
split up among the monopoly providers.  At one time,
the actual amount of the fees paid in gold francs for
the service was denominated.  Thus, the "golden tree"
was not only a windfall, but really golden!

Generally, countries turned around and adopted F-Series
and D-Series standards as law and were rigorously
enforced worldwide.  These provisions became the basis
for maintaining global monopoly regimes for telecoms.
For example, until comparatively recently private
parties could not own or obtain telecommunication
circuits and turn around and share the available
capacity with others.  In other words, Internets were
not allowed.

As telecoms players in the late 70s/early 80s
envisioned themselves providing monopoly integrated
telecom and information systems and services on a
global scale, an extensive set of F-Series
recommendations were adopted for Data Communications
Networks.  At that time, most telecom players viewed
the Internet as a major threat to their business
interests, and sought to impede its development and use
through a variety of devises, including mandated OSI
standards with F-Series recommendations.

Even in countries like the U.S. where there was a
breaking away from monopoly telecom provisioning, and
where some agencies were supporting Internet
development, other government agencies were enamored
with the more regulated telecom approaches and jumped
on the pro-OSI, anti-Internet bandwagon.

In this vein, ITU-T Recommendation F.500 was developed
in the 1980s to specify how the X.500 technical
specification was to be manifested as a service in
the marketplace.


X.500 AND F.500

At the pinnacle of the OSI world was a highly
structured, top-down hierarchical naming tree.  It's
purpose and functions were very similar to the Internet
Domain Name System (DNS) - "name-address mapping."  This
structure was denominated "The Directory" and given the
designation X.500.

Like DNS, the X.500 specification, as noted in its
opening section, was "not intended to be a
general-purpose data base system" but responsive to
"queries" to allow "mapping" of "user-friendly" names
to addresses.  It even specified that changes to The
Directory "do not affect OSI network operation."

However, it differed from DNS is several very
significant ways.  The purported "user-friendly" names
were actually complex, lengthy, and cumbersome to use.
The work was done through global standards committees
entirely separated from any market or user feedback and
based on what the standards participants thought
desirable for users.  The entire naming schema didn't
allow for user choice or personnas, but created
addressing formats that were imposed on end users - you
got what was handed to you.

And lastly, this was all implemented through a single
Golden Tree with a single ITU root and country domains
managed by rigid administrative structures
substantially catering to governmental and PTT telecom
monopoly regimes.  Everything was confined to national
borders, and transnational administration domains were
not allowed.

The last feature for achieving a Golden Tree is where
F.500 came into play.  F.500 specified a single global
schema for implementing the provisioning of X.500
services.  This was placed in the hands of ITU Member
State Administrations who would themselves or through
authorized parties whom they regulated, populate the
X.500 golden tree and "make available for subscribers
or users at the discretion of the Administration
offering the service."

As was common with F-Series recommendations, F.500
specified service requirements and features, user
facilities, and the operational requirements and
quality of service features that to be provided to the
public.  It even enjoyed its own complementary D.37
recommendation establishing revenue accounting and
settlements among national F.500 providers.  This was
all said to be necessary to protect the public.


SO WHAT HAPPENED?

There is a kind of perverse side of "Internet Time."
It's known as Internet Memory Loss.  Much of the work
described here was done in the early 80s, and all the
international provisions were formally adopted in 1988.
National implementation work occurred in the 90s.

It all would have been mandated into place had it not
been for two major developments.  One was the breakup
of the U.S. ATT monopoly combined with the FCC's
Computer II and III rules that became manifested
outside the U.S. through a variety of telecom monopoly
busting developments.  This included the European
Commission, the GATT, and even the ITU (under
Secretary-General Butler).  The other was the dramatic
growth and adoption rate of Internet technologies
within private companies.  The private marketplace -
albeit confined to large corporations - began to
subvert the public monopoly cartels and their so-called
DeJure (i.e., by law) OSI strategies.

These dramatic paradigm shifts were still substantially
playing out in the early 90s - even in the U.S.
Although contrary to FCC policies, the F.500 Golden
Tree found substantial favor among the dominant telecom
providers, the Department of Commerce, State
Department, and some parts of DOD and GSA.  They met
for many months under the aegis of Dept of State
sponsored advisory committees and worked through
favored U.S. standards body umbrellas during 1991-92.

The entire schema and copious regulations for
administering the Golden Tree were developed and put
into place for the US domain.  The ANSI Secretariat won
the bid for the national public registry, and the Dept
of Commerce assigned itself the registry for
governmental bodies.  Even as late as 1993-94 as public
use of the Internet began to scale, some major U.S.
telcos were insisting that the only legitimate schema
was F.500 and dissuaded use of the Internet domain name
system as an inferior "DeFacto" service.

F.500 lost dramatically in the marketplace not only
because of the growing popularity of the Internet, but
also because Internet DNS users could be masters of
their own domains.  They could craft themselves names
that were relatively simple and meaningful; that were
theirs.  This was substantially enhanced by the lack of
administrative rigidity, quick availability, relatively
low cost, and the transformation of names into a public
marketplace by pioneering entrepreneurs.  Instant
Messenger and similar business-driven, user-oriented
naming schema also enjoyed great success.

Amazingly, these F.500 Golden Tree provisions have
never been rescinded.  They are still the official
domain schema of the ITU and in most countries,
including the U.S.  As of a recent tally, only a few
hundred customers ever registered US domains.

The story, however, isn't entirely negative.  Pieces of
the X.500 standard itself were extracted and a "X.500
Lite" was created and given the name Lightweight
Directory Access Protocol or LDAP.  It has been
re-engineered by a number of bodies and vendors and
become autonomously used on a widespread basis in the
marketplace.

Similarly, the piece dealing with security known as
X.509 has become the cornerstone of Internet ECommerce
and communications security.  Here again, the success
of the technology rested in the bottom-up adaptation,
implementation, and use by commercial vendors in the
marketplace.


ENUM Deja Vu

One of humankind's more persistent adages is that
"history repeats itself."  The admonition has a
substantial basis in this arena.

Last year a handful of standards participants quickly
developed a X.500 like directory schema using
telephone numbers and called ENUM.  It was based in
part on another ITU specification, E.164, that was
married to an elegant if somewhat unnecessarily
encumbering mandated pointer schema.

However, it didn't stop at just being a protocol.  They
bundled it with a F.500 provisioning schema with a
single DeJure root under the ITU.  It was touted as the
Golden Tree capable of mapping to all user
communication applications.  The proponents specified a
rigid and complex administrative schema around country
domains where users got whatever number was doled out
to them.  It was completely devoid of user demand or
marketplace approaches.  (Seem familiar?)

Virtually the same repertoire of F.500 standards
activities, advisory committees, and parties have been
spun up over the past year.   Copious detailed
administrative provisioning specifications in an ever
expanding number of standards groups are being created
and beginning to disgorge pages of requirements
documents.

The same refrains of regulating to protect the public
are offered.  Long-standing FCC policies are being
ignored.  Official "ENUM roots" are proffered and
"DeJure ENUM" blessing of governmental agencies is being
sought.  This juggernaut continues to go forward today -
even though it makes little long-term sense even for
dominant telcos today.

Where this will end up remains to be seen.   However,
if history and user choices in marketplaces are any
indicator, the DeJure ENUM effort will end up exactly
where the DeJure F.500 effort did.  On the other hand,
to the extent that the technology and the underlying
protocols of ENUM are slimmed down, further developed
and offered in a lightweight fashion in an
entrepreneurial marketplace, ENUM Lite may have a
successful future.


---
* These are personal views of the author and not
necessarily those of any entity with which he is
associated.  I would also like to thank Dave Farber
for the many years of facilitating discussion on
important issues, among his many other activities.




For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/