U.S. Endorses ENUM

esarjeant writes "It looks like the the U.S. has endorsed ENUM (also known as E.164.arpa). This means you get a single number for phone and Internet, look for demos at Spring VON (San Jose, April 1-3) and VISIONng will be engaging in US trials. Essentially this means you get a new TLD of e164.arpa with your phone number in front of it." The addresses look pretty long and unwieldy, but supposedly consumer devices will make it easier to use.

Comments

I think

[Timesprout]

this is going to make writing women's phone numbers on beer mats a tad more difficult.

Re:I think

[Library Spoff]

this is gonna mean *making up* phonenumbers more difficult ;)

Re:I think

[joe_bruin]

dude, i totally scored her number, check it out: 1.0.0.127.e164.arpa

HEY, WAITAMINUTE!

One number...

[More Karma Than God]

One Number to rule them all, One Number to find them,
One Number to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Oh, great.

[dphoenix]

Telemarketer: Hello, sir! Can I interest you in a university diploma?
Me: "It's 4 am."
Telemarketer: It's 8 am here, sir! So How about that university diploma?

This is a horribly, horribly bad idea. :)

Some interesting observations....

[Quantum Jim]

First of all, is this going to allow me to type "T.T.A.L.L.A.C.0.0.8.1.e164.arpa" when I want to go to the "1-800-CALL-ATT" or would I have to use the actual numbers?

Secondly, how long until we get:

Just type T.T.A.L.L.A.C.0.0.8.1.e164.arpa to save up to 44% on long-distance internet browsing!

Finally, why is this addressing scheme named after Arpanet (*.arpa)? Isn't that a bit out-of-date?

Textual Internet Phone Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

What the Internet really needs is a set of numbers to connect to commonly used people and sites. The current system (tld's, subdomains, @-signs, etc.) is way too confusing. People have a hard time understanding it and finding what they are looking for. A number similar to a phone number for looking up people and businesses on the Internet would simplify things a lot. The only catch I see is that there are a lot of Internet addresses, and perhaps a 32-bit number would be required to identify all of them.

Further, I propose a system to extend the Internet phone numbers to have a textual equivalent. It would be a word or series of words that might be chosen to describe the person or business owning the number. Further, suffixes could be used to identify the nature of the name, such as commercial or the name of the country of origin. To distinguish between the various Internet addresses accessed by the number, a prefix could optionally be added to specify the protocol with which to connect, and for families, businesses and groups, a user name could optionally be specified in addition.

This new system would be a dramatic simplification of the current system with its confusing and obfuscated methodologies. Numbers are much better for identification, and with the usability enhancements I have described would be far superior.

Great!

[SecretAsianMan]

looks like the the U.S. has endorsed ENUM

Great! Maybe we will all start using enum instead of #defined constants!

cool

[the_2nd_coming]

so now the US will allow enumeration or return types!!!! thank god.

This is news?

[image]

About time the rest of the US caught on. I've been using ENUM's since Pascal:

TYPE
Suit = { spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds };

Or C:

enum suit { SPADES, HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS };

Or Java:

public final class Suit {
public static final Suit SPADES = new Suit( "Spades" );
public static final Suit HEARTS = new Suit( "Hearts" );
public static final Suit DIAMONDS = new Suit( "Diamonds" );
public static final Suit CLUBS = new Suit( "Clubs" );
private String _name = null;
private Suit( String name ) { _name = name; }
public String toString{ return _name; }
}

Oh wait. Now I read the article! Nevermind...

Re:More Information about ENUM

[pro-mpd]

It does, because that makes it encrypted.

Ergo, your number is safe because any attempt to decode it violates the DMCA! Yay!!