e164.apra vs e164.org Same Lookup method?
 

Hi There,
I have a SNOM 320 phone which supports ENUM. It uses e164.apra as it's default. If I change that to e164.org, should I expect it to work?

I'm still a bit confused as the doco (at Snom wiki) says

"snom VoIP phones support ENUM. By default, whenever you dial a number, the phone will first try to locate the ENUM entry for the number provided in the user part of the number (for example, if you dial “<sip:+4930398330@company.com>”)."

This indicates the Phone does the lookup ? However all it seems to do is to create a dialplan to add country/area prefix and adds ";phone=yes" to the end of the invite. This then gets passed to the VSP.

So my question is:
Does the VSP have to support ENUM lookups? or is there Hardware that will do the lookup and fall back to the VSP when it's not found?

I know you can do it in *.
Cheers,
Mark

It should work. But the e164.arpa and e164.org "ENUM roots" have a different list of phone numbers that they support. So if you just switched from e164.arpa to e164.org (for your lookups), you would add the e164.org numbers (good) but lose support for the e164.arpa numbers (bad).

Ideally (if your equipment supports multiple ENUM root lookups), you would want to lookup numbers in both ENUM roots, to get both sets of numbers "free". Or, if you don't have built-in hardware ENUM lookup support (or your hardware lookup is limited to a single ENUM root), you could use either voxalot.com or sipbroker.com for your ENUM lookups. Both SIP Broker and Voxalot will check 5 different ENUM roots, to see if the number is listed in any of them (and therefore a "free call"): e164.arpa, e164.org, e164.info, e164.televolution.net, and enum.org

I looked at that link, and admit I'm a little confused as well. The article mentions ENUM lookups, but doesn't say anything about which ENUM roots are looked up (or even if a user can set this info). So that article leaves as many questions (about that hardware) as it answers.

A small minority of VoIP hardware/software can do ENUM lookups. For example, I think the open source http://www.asterisk.org has direct support for ENUM. However, I can't tell from that wiki article what support your snom equipment has or doesn't have (as the article leaves out key pieces of info).

And it is true, that the majority of VoIP hardware seems to lack ENUM support. And even when there is ENUM support in the hardware, the equipment makers may have just (falsely) assumed that only one ENUM root was sufficient (when you really want to lookup with multiple ENUM roots, to get the most numbers "for free"). For people with equipment this is more limited like this (and that's the majority of us out there), it is usually easier to have some VoIP service (such as Voxalot) handle the ENUM lookups for you, instead of trying to do your own local ENUM lookups directly.

NOTE: Even if your equipment could (in theory) handle the ENUM lookups for you, you could still choose to use a VoIP provider (such as Voxalot) to handle ENUM, if you desired. For example, if your snom system doesn't let you set the ENUM roots (or limits you to only a single ENUM root for lookup), you would likely be better off just sending the calls via Voxalot, which looks up ENUM on 5 different ENUM roots (and therefor can handle potentially fancier ENUM lookups than your hardware directly supports).

Thanks for the reply DracoFelis

I am a big advocate of Voxalot and actually signed up with them and registered my Phone in e164.org before buying any equipment or signing up with a VSP. I love what you guys are doing.

I eventually purchased a Billion 7404VGO and one of the selling features for me was it “ENUM Support” and I wanted VPN. Unfortunately the product does not quite work as advertised.

I had a dig around via the CLI of the Billion and found that it also supports the same 5 roots you mentioned. (see http://www.billion.com.au/forums/ind...showtopic=7603); Unfortunately it only works if there is an ENUM record. No fallback mechanism.

Unfortunately, this is true for most new VoIP products. And of course not everyone follows the std’s either. Interestingly the snom wiki mentions RFC2915 (section Substitution Expression Grammar) in it’s dialplan substitution rules docos.

There is an entry in the Snom’s configuration which enables you to enter the ENUM Root to use. It did say e164.apra and I changed it to e164.org. There is enough room in the GUI, so hopefully they will allow for additional entries.

The [maybe not so] obvious reason I am trying to find a hardware solution is because some VSP’s lock you in and don’t subscribe to the Sipbroker/Voxalot/e164.org open, caring, sharing approach and I’m trying to find a way around that (as one does) :D. These VSP’s typically don’t work with Voxalot either.

I’ll see if I can get any info from Snom, maybe I should send them a link to e164.org.

Cheers,
Mark

Problem with +
 

Hi DracoFelis,

I managed to get the ENUM working on the SNOM as it was supposed to; Added the missing ENUM roots to the list and hey presto it looks them all up.

However, as part of it's (i suspect) check against spoofing, it checks that the data in the enum entry is an exact match hence "61212345678" does not match but "+61212345678" is. If it finds a match it re-routes to the SIP address in the record.

However, If it does not find a record, it sends the number Including the leading "+" to the VSP, which of course, returns "Not Found"

Do you know of *any* vsp's that could handle the "+"?
I supposed the "+" have to be present in the Enum record?
cheers,
mark

Mark, I think instead of + try "00".

no the plus is needed, i doubt country specific codes will work...

Strip the +
 

For any users interested, I think we can strip the + off of your incoming calls. I would be willing to test.

Mark
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