[ppml] ppml 2002-7

[David Conrad]

Trevor,

On Friday, February 14, 2003, at 07:32  AM, Trevor Paquette wrote:
> We need to learn from the existing telephone companies.. they have 
> been doing this for YEARS and have way more experience then we do; 
> assigning numbers, dealing with renumbering issues etc.. that is.

Recent experiences with area code renumbering and number block size 
reduction would tend to indicate the telephone companies (in the US at 
least) had the same philosophy wrt number allocation that the (early) 
Internet did -- "ask and you shall receive 'cause there are so many 
numbers, we'll never run out".  As with the Internet, this has become a 
bit of a problem.

> Do you think that the phone companies would allow for everyone to have 
> their own phone number and be able to take it with them should they 
> move? No.. thought not.

As has been indicated LNP does exactly this.  And no, the telephone 
companies aren't particularly excited about it, but they don't have a 
choice.  Government mandates and all that.

> Why is that? Think about for a bit.

In fact, the implication of LNP is to turn "telephone numbers" into 
something that looks, smells, and feels like a domain name.

> Maybe instead of looking for the 'quick' fix (allow companies their 
> own /24), we should be looking at the 'right' fix (how can we make 
> renumbering a snap).
>
> By making renumbering a very easy process, you actually will create a 
> benefit that is more usable to more people then allowing a wholesale 
> 'open season' on getting IP space.

Well, yes.  Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, renumbering is 
viewed as a _very_ difficult problem.  Literal IP addresses in routers, 
ACLs, /etc/hosts (or equivalent), management systems, software 
"floating licensing" systems, etc. are one aspect of this.  The use of 
IP addresses in transport layer pseudo-header computation are another.  
There are possible solutions, but they require a non-trivial amount of 
work and will not happen in the near term.

Rgds,
-drc
(Speaking for myself only)