The IP over ATM Mailing List Archive by date

[bryang@eng.adaptec.com (Bryan Gleeson x3228)]

Bert,

>
>My faith in the NNI, especially a public NNI, comes from the fact that the 
>global telephone system works remarkably well with an enormous number of 
>subscribers. Much greater than the number of Internet hosts, so far at 
>least. Now, one could certainly protest here, pointing out that the 
>telephone routing of today doesn't have to worry about multiple QoS levels 
>and the like. Agreed, but then again IP routing doesn't either.
>

If you want to compare things to telephone systems then the problem to
be solved here is not really the traditional "how do I phone somebody", but 
rather "how do I phone somebody using their personal-800 (or national equivalent) 
number" in a world where _everybody_ uses personal-800 numbers. This
is a number which belongs to me, (say 1-800-GLEESON), which is independent
of the actual phone number I use (say 1-408-945-8600), and which may
map to different "real" numbers at different times (if I go on a business trip
for instance). The mapping of personal-800 numbers to "real" phone numbers 
is thus somewhat analagous to mapping IP addresses to ATM addresses. It is the
handle by which I am known, the mapping is needed to find out where to place the
call to, and the mapping is fairly static but may change. It would be interesting 
to know how telephone companies currently handle this today, and how they would 
handle it in a world where everybody used such a number. If they were allowed to 
introduce some hierarchy into the 800 number space would they do so, or would it 
stay flat ? (In the U.S. 800 numbers used to be hierarchical but now due to
laws requiring 800 number portability between different carriers they are
now "flat", I believe). Saying that very large IP-ATM flatnets make sense
because the telephone system works is a bit simplistic, IMHO.

Regards,
Bryan Gleeson
Adaptec.