[1068] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: 800 numbers vs. IP addresses (was Routing wars pending?)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Geis)
Fri Nov 17 05:48:30 1995
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 1995 15:56:02 +0100 (CET)
From: Stephen Geis <STEPHEN.GEIS@ITU.CH>
To: Alan Hannan <alan@gi.net>, nanog <nanog@merit.edu>
Cc: jnc <jnc@ginger.lcs.mit.edu>, HANK <HANK@taunivm.tau.ac.il>,
nanog <nanog@dune.silkroad.com>,
big-internet <big-internet@munnari.oz.au>, cidrd <cidrd@iepg.org>,
little <little@faline.bellcore.com>
X-Envelope-to: nanog@merit.edu
Alan Hannan asked:
> What are the correlations and contrasts between our current
> backbone routing problems (wrt space and # of routes) and the FCC
> decision several years ago to make 1-800 numbers portable.
>
There is a major difference between ownership of IP network numbers and
telephone number portability: the economic benefits of ownership of
addresses are not comparable to those of ownership of telephone numbers.
As far as I know, the economic benefits of network number ownership are
confined to cost avoidance related to re-numbering.
A major argument for ownership of telephone numbers (and especially
freephone - e.g., 800 - numbers) is that the subscriber makes an investment
(by advertising, letterhead, etc) getting knowledge of a subscriber's phone
number to customers, friends, and other correspondents.
Since the knowledge (as used by humans) of how to reach a "subscriber" on
the Internet is encoded in a DNS name and not in an address, no comparable
argument can be made for ownership of addresses.
Stephen Geis
ITU
geis@itu.ch
