Re: 40lb Marshmallow Bags

[wb8foz () nrk com]

Scott Huddle sez:
> An interesting article on how some others administer a numbering plan.
>
> "...We are not out of phone numbers. 
....
> This was necessary, according to [Ronald] Conners [administrator
> of the NANP], because the phone company's switching equipment required 
> the first six digits -- the area code and the exchange -- to identify 
> the billing and routing of a call. It could not further subdivide the 
> number without causing chaos. Unfortunately, this also resulted in many 
> unused numbers. Millions of unused numbers. Conners talks of this as
> though it were inevitable.


Well, which costs less (and least threatens integrity of the
system).. 1)adding new NPA overlays, or 2) rewriting millions of
dollars worth of CO and tandem code?

While it's easy to make cheap talk about #2, it is anything but
to really do so... This is after all, real-time,
ultra-high-reliability, [did you try your BANS phone
yesterday.....;-?]  resource-constrained code...

Note that the decisions that predicated the full-prefix increment
were made many decades ago and for sound reasons.  [I seem to
recall that some other folks who used to route on much smaller
divisions CHANGED their mind when they ran into problems, and
increased the size of the increment....but I can not remember
exactly who that was..... ;-] They have help up pretty well in
the face of totally unpredicable changes [MFJ, Murdock Telcom
Act, etc.]








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