ENUM is a brilliant solution for querying a contact identifier and returning other contact information. Imagine looking up a phone number and being able to identify an email address, website, phone number, SIP URI, address, business name etc. The reason I bring this up is because I have started working on enumplus.org once again and thought I should shed some more light on why it is beneficial for you to sign up. Our primary objective for enumplus is being able to call standard DID’s as you would find in your every day phone book and route the call over IP without touching your carrier or ITSP (there is huge savings here).
The biggest prioblem with ENUM lookup sources is that there are so many and they are all very incomplete. The percentage of numbers I call that actually route over IP is pretty much zero (unless I am calling 1-8XX of course). The beauty of Enumplus is that we give you a module for free which is easy to install and add additional lookup sources on the fly. You do not need to be an Enumplus subscriber to have access to the module – just upload it to FreePBX and add whichever ENUM lookup sources you subscribe to.
Enough about that, here is how it works.
When you pick up your phone and dial a number, the first thing your Asterisk system does (when using ENUM) is check the database for lookup sources. It then queries the lookup source DNS server for a NAPTR record using a command that looks like the following :
dig +short 5.5.5.5.5.5.5.1.lookupsource.org NAPTR
Where the 5.5.5.5.5.5.5.1 is the phone number reversed (seperated by periods) and the domain lookup (DNS Server) source at the end.
If the record exists, the DNS server will respond with something that looks like the following :
100 10 “u” “E2U+SIP” !^\\+15555555555$!sip:did@provider.com!” .
The ENUM script then strips the SIP URI from the result and terminates the call over IP.
If the record doesn’t exist – it will query the next source in line – if it runs out of sources the call will be routed as usual over your ITSP or carrier. NAPTR records can be used to return other values as well. Take a look over at e164.org – there you will find a Firefox plugin that converts DID’s to domain names as well as email addresses.
So go sign up at http://enumplus.org and test it out. Feel free to leave comments below.
It is crunch time.
I have completed a working (very basic) DNS box passing NAPTR records for e164. We no longer need a Bind expert, I read a few books and the system appears to be working great.
For those of you who are interested in testing this service – hit up http://enumplus.org and create an account. You will immediately have access to add new records as well as validate your DID and SIP URI right away – no more waiting for a scheduled call that rarely works…
At this point it is only open to North American DID’s as I am not rich and can’t call overseas until I get some capital. For this to work you must edit your enumlookup.agi script and add enumplus.org to the domain lookup array (or patch your enumlookup.agi file). I plan to release a quick script to make enumlookup work out of the box – I have also mentioned it to other high ranking individuals.
This project has been offered hosting left and right – I guess people are interested so the faster we get some feedback – the faster you get a quality ENUM host for your DID’s.
Send me feedback!
