more on Worth reading Wall Street Journal on fragmentation of the Internet

["David Farber" <dave () farber net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert.Shaw () itu int [mailto:Robert.Shaw () itu int] 
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 3:51 AM
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Worth reading Wall Street Journal on fragmentation
of the Internet

Dave,

Fred Baker makes some good points.  In that context, it might be 
worth recalling how the naming and addressing issue is handled in 
what remains the world's largest pervasive global addressing scheme, 
the telephone number space (with some 3.4 billion fixed plus mobile
"lines" and still growing rapidly).

There is no centralized, machine-readable, authoritative, top-level 
root that is used as a source for all lower-level switching and 
routing.  Instead, ITU publishes on its web site a list, freely 
accessible to anybody, that lists the correspondence between country 
names and country code, e.g., Switzerland corresponds to 41.  We also
publish a list for global codes (e.g., satellite) which are 
equivalent to "generic TLDs" in the DNS. National authorities publish 
corresponding information at the national level.

Each individual telephone operator is responsible for either coding 
that information (together with routing information) into their switches 
or (more commonly) outsourcing that activity to somebody else.

Consistency of the worldwide telephone addressing scheme is ensured by 
market forces: competition is such that operators strive to make sure 
that their databases are globally consistent, so that anybody can call 
anybody anywhere in the world.  There is no need for either regulatory 
or technical constraints or central control points to force this
consistency.

This lack of forced consistency favors innovation (as internet folks 
would say "at the edges").  For example, when 1-800 numbers were 
first introduced in the USA, they didn't exist elsewhere, and there was 
no international agreement regarding the concept of toll-free lines.  
The US introduced the numbers anyway.  For many years, they could not be 
dialed from outside the USA, because operators had not worked out how to 
do international billing for such numbers. So one could say that the 
"namespace" was fragmented and there was a inconsistency in the global 
dialing plan - e.g., the US 800 space could not be reached from outside 
the USA.

However, market pressures eventually solved this problem: operators have 
reached agreements regarding billing issues and now, when you dial US 800 
numbers (at least from Switzerland), you are informed that the call will 
not be toll free, and it is then completed.

So I'd agree fundamentally with Karl Auerbach that many confuse
*consistency* 
with *singularity*. 

cheers,

RS
--
Robert Shaw <robert.shaw () itu int>
ITU Internet Strategy and Policy Advisor
Strategy and Policy Unit <http://www.itu.int/spu/> 
Google Earth: 46°13'16.78"N 6°8'20.62"E


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