Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal

[Roland Perry <lists () internetpolicyagency com>]

In article <20080125140553.GA32299 () nic fr>, Stephane Bortzmeyer 
<bortzmeyer () nic fr> writes

> > in the UK it [phone number portability] 's done with something
> > similar to DNS. The telephone system looks up the first N digits of
> > the number to determine the operator it was first issued to. And
> > places a query to them. That either causes the call to be accepted
> > and routed, or they get an answer back saying "sorry, that number
> > has been ported to operator FOO-TEL, go ask them instead".
>
> What happens when a phone number is ported twice, from BAR-TEL to
> FOO-TEL and then to WAZ-TEL? Does the call follows the list? What if
> there is a loop?

In the UK, for landlines there are generally only two operators 
available: BT and Virgin (the now sole brand for cable phones). So WAZ 
doesn't exist, all you can do is go back to BAR.

For mobiles, I've never heard of a restriction so it's probably the case 
that the donor network stays the same, but the recipient records are 
updated to point to WAZ instead of FOO.

> The solution you describe does not look like the DNS to me. A solution
> more DNS-like would be to have a root (which is not an operator)
> somewhere and every call triggers a call to the root which then
> replies, "send to WAS-TEL".

That's the scheme which was proposed in 2002, and which I'm a bit 
surprised isn't yet deployed (watch the space called ukporting.com [1], 
apparently). However, the current mobile scheme isn't very far off that.

[1] Why not ukporting.org.uk ??
--
Roland Perry