Enum Protocol

ENUM translates telephone numbers to IP addresses.

"ENUM" is short for "The E.164 to Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Application." It translates telephone numbers to IP addresses. IP stands for Internet Protocol. An IP address is the standard addressing system for the Internet.

Features

The International Telecommunication Union defined a standard for telephone numbers called "The International Public Telecommunication Number Plan." This standard is known as "E.164."

Function

The Domain Name System (DNS) maps web addresses like "www.demandstudios.com" to IP addresses. The user's web browser first goes to the route DNS server when a web page is requested. This server directs the browser to the server where the specific mapping to an IP address is held. ENUM creates another step for telephone numbers to enable these to be listed by DNS servers.

Method

ENUM remaps a telephone number by removing all non-numeric characters, putting dots between the numbers and then reversing the order of the number. It then appends the string ".e164.arpa" to create an address. This address is then referenced through DNS to arrive at an IP address. DNS databases first need to be populated with a record for this mapping before a telephone number can be translated into an IP address.

References

• Internet Engineering Task Force: The E.164 to Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Application (ENUM)
• VoIP Info: ENUM