North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Statements against new.net?

  • From: Joe Abley
  • Date: Thu Mar 15 10:48:23 2001

On Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 09:59:53AM -0500, Kavi, Prabhu wrote:
> Look at how local number portability (LNP) works.  Before
> the phone call is connected, a translation is made between
> the logical number and the actual number.  The actual
> number is based upon geography, and consists of
> country-code, area-code, local exchange, and then 
> physical port number.  As a result, the routing tables
> in telephone networks are small.  For example, if you
> are in the US and need to call the UK, the network
> only needs one entry for all telephone networks in
> the UK (plus a few more for redundancy).

This translation/lookup function is only necessary once per call
in a circuit-switched network.

In a packet-switched network, it's required once per packet.

For this reason, number portability on the internet and in the
PSTN are quite different problems.


Joe