Subject: [SIP] SIP URL clarification for user paramater

From: "Vijay K. Gurbani" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 13:41:21 -0500

Jonathan/Henning:

In RFC2543bis, section 2, 2nd last paragraph on page 17, you say:

   "The user parameter value "np-queried" indicates that the user part
    contains a telephone number AND that the number reflects the result
    of a query to the local number portability database".

However, in Figure 3 on page 18, the BNF for user-param is:

   user-param = "user="("phone" | "ip")

Should it be modified to:

   user-param = "user="(("phone" | "np-queried") | "ip")

A look at the archives indicate that Jonathan and Marc Petit-Huguenin
had a thread on this around May 10, 2000 with Jonathan stating that 
there was no consensus on if this was the right way to do this.  Any
updates?

Thanks,

- vijay
-- 
Vijay K. Gurbani  [email-masked] [email-masked] [email-masked]
IN Architecture and Internet Software Group
Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs Innovations, 263 Shuman Blvd, Rm 1A-418
Naperville, Illinois 60566  Voice: +1 630 224 0216 Fax: +1 630 713 0184

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From: Jonathan Rosenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 15:45:51 -0400

> there was no consensus on if this was the right way to do this.  Any

None I've seen. I have no problem with the idea of saying that some kind
of query has been done, but this particular solution is very specific to
LNP, and I think there is a bigger picture. 

I would argue that the need for this thing at all arises because the
telephone network uses equivalently formatted numbers to refer to two
things - names and actual routing numbers (i.e., addresses). Its sort of
like what would have happened if IP addresses and domain names were the
same in syntax and formatting, such that you couldn't tell one from the
other without checking with some database. The purpose of LNP is much
like DNS, to translate an abstract name to a real routable address. Now,
in the world of URLs, the namespace (or abstractly, the address space)
of the content of the URL is defined by the scheme. If we view "numbers
as names" and "numbers as addresses" as difference "namespaces", the
theoretically correct way to indicate that LNP has been done is by
defining a new URL scheme for the two:

tel:18005551212 and
rn:17325551212

where LNP (or 800 number lookup in this case) is used to translate.

I am not proposing to do this, since practically speaking, its a pain.
But I'd like something more generic to indicate the namespace that the
number fits into. I don't exactly know what or how to do this. Perhaps
this is really just phone-context, with the context being
"routing-number" once translated? 

-Jonathan R.

-- 
Jonathan D. Rosenberg                       72 Eagle Rock Ave.
Chief Scientist                             First Floor
dynamicsoft                                 East Hanover, NJ 07936
[email-masked]                     FAX:   (732) 741-4778
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