NRENum.net

Last updated
NRENum.net
Purpose ENUM service for academia
Parent organization
 TERENA
Website www.nrenum.net

The NRENum.net service is an end-user ENUM service run by TERENA and the participating national research and education networking organisations (NRENs), primarily for academia. NRENum.net is considered as a complementary service and a valid alternative to the Golden ENUM tree. The domain nrenum.net is being populated in order to provide the infrastructure in DNS for storage of E.164 numbers. The NRENum.net service includes the operation of the Tier-0 root Domain Name Server(s) and the delegation of county codes to NRENum.net Registries. NRENum.net is a registered community trademark of TERENA.

Contents

Service description

E.164 Telephone Number Mapping (ENUM) is a standard protocol that is the result of work of the Internet Engineering Task Force's Telephone Number Mapping working group. ENUM translates a telephone number into a domain name. This allows users to continue to use the existing phone number formats they are familiar with, while allowing the call to be routed using DNS. This makes ENUM a quick, stable and cheap link between telecommunications systems and the Internet.

RFC 3761 discusses the use of the Domain Name System for storage of E.164 numbers. [1] More specifically, how DNS can be used for identifying available services connected to one E.164 number. The RIPE NCC provides DNS operations for e164.arpa (known as Golden ENUM tree) in accordance with the instructions from the Internet Architecture Board.

The NRENum.net service is an end-user ENUM service run by TERENA and the participating NRENs primarily for academia. NRENum.net is considered as a complementary service and a valid alternative to the Golden ENUM tree. The domain nrenum.net is being populated in order to provide the infrastructure in DNS for storage of E.164 numbers. The NRENum.net service includes the operation of the Tier-0 root Domain Name Servers and the delegation of county codes to NRENum.net Registries. NRENum.net is a registered community trademark of TERENA. NRENum.net facilitates services such as Voice over IP and videoconferencing. [2]

NRENum.net tree refers to the tree structure where:

An NRENum.net Registry is an entity that is authorised by the NRENum.net Operations Team to operate the national or regional Tier-1 Domain Name Server and be responsible for the county code(s) delegated. In many countries there is a National Research and Education Networking organisation (NREN) that acts as the Registry of the country.

An NRENum.net Registrar is responsible for the number/block registration in the Tier-1 DNS and a Number Validation Entity is responsible for the validation of the E.164 telephone numbers to be registered. The NREN may at the same time have the role of the NRENum.net Registry, Registrar and Validation Entity for the country code(s) delegated.

A Registrant (end user) is an E.164 telephone number holder. Holders of E.164 numbers who want to be listed in the service must contact the appropriate NRENum.net Registrar.

Number (block) delegation is the technical process of assigning country codes to national registries, or number blocks under country codes to end users. Number (block) registration is the technical process of configuring DNS and populating it with the appropriate ENUM records (i.e., adding NAPTR records to DNS) via registrars.

The ITU-T strictly regulates the number structure of valid E.164 telephone numbers and assigns number blocks to national authorities (telecom regulators) or recently to global entities directly. The national authorities can further delegate the number ranges to local operators within the country or region. A virtual number has either a non-valid E.164 number structure (e.g., longer than 15 digits) or has a valid structure but is not assigned to any national authorities or operators. The number Validation Entity is responsible for checking the numbers to be registered to NRENum.net.

History

The idea for the NRENum.net service was conceived in 2006. [3] [4] NRENum.net became operational in August 2006, and was run by Bernie Höneisen, a staff member of SWITCH, and Kewin Stöckigt, a staff member of AARNet, as a private service, with technical support from SWITCH and the participants in the TERENA Task Force on Enhanced Communication Services (TF-ECS). When that task force completed its activities in 2008, TERENA agreed to take over the coordination of the NRENum.net service. [5] By that time, nine NRENs had joined NRENum.net. The service continued to grow during the next years, and in March 2012 NRENum.net went global when RNP from Brazil joined the service as its 14th partificpant and the first outside Europe. [6] [7]

In 2011, the participants decided to migrate the operation of the service's master Domain Name Server to NIIF and the operation of the two secondary DNSs to CARNET and SWITCH. [8] In 2013, Internet2, AARNet and NORDUnet set up additional secondary Domain Name Servers for their regions, thereby completing the global distribution of DNS slaves and bringing the resilience of the NRENum.net infrastructure to a high level. [9]

Governance

TERENA has established a lightweight global governance structure. [10] The Global NRENum.net Governance Committee (GNGC) is the highest-level strategic body responsible for overall NRENum.net service definition, sustainability and long-term strategy. This includes formulating and recommending service governance principles and policies. Its members are nominated by the NRENum.net Registries in the various world regions, and are appointed by TERENA. The GNGC is composed of two members representing Europe, two representing the Asia-Pacific region, and two representing the Americas. [10]

The NRENum.net Operations Team is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Tier-0 root DNSs and the handling of country code delegation requests. [11] It may escalate technical or policy issues to the GNGC for discussion.

TERENA is responsible for ensuring the correct and secure operations of the NRENum.net service performed by the NRENum.net Operations Team and governance by the GNGC. TERENA also supports the development of technical improvements to the NRENum.net service and promotes the deployment of NRENum.net worldwide.

Geographical deployment

Thirty-two county codes are delegated in the NRENum.net service. Below these are listed per world region.

Europe

Asia-Pacific

North America

Latin America

Caribbean

Africa

Related Research Articles

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the associated entities. Most prominently, it translates readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols. The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ICANN</span> American nonprofit organization that coordinates several Internet address databases

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the Internet, ensuring the network's stable and secure operation. ICANN performs the actual technical maintenance work of the Central Internet Address pools and DNS root zone registries pursuant to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function contract. The contract regarding the IANA stewardship functions between ICANN and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the United States Department of Commerce ended on October 1, 2016, formally transitioning the functions to the global multistakeholder community.

In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As of 2017, 330.6 million domain names had been registered. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.

E.164 is an international standard, titled The international public telecommunication numbering plan, that defines a numbering plan for the worldwide public switched telephone network (PSTN) and some other data networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet Assigned Numbers Authority</span> Standards organization overseeing IP addresses

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Internet Protocol–related symbols and Internet numbers.

A domain name registry is a database of all domain names and the associated registrant information in the top level domains of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that enables third party entities to request administrative control of a domain name. Most registries operate on the top-level and second-level of the DNS.

Telephone number mapping is a system of unifying the international telephone number system of the public switched telephone network with the Internet addressing and identification name spaces. Internationally, telephone numbers are systematically organized by the E.164 standard, while the Internet uses the Domain Name System (DNS) for linking domain names to IP addresses and other resource information. Telephone number mapping systems provide facilities to determine applicable Internet communications servers responsible for servicing a given telephone number using DNS queries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verisign</span> American Internet company

Verisign Inc. is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, United States, that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc country-code top-level domains, and the back-end systems for the .jobs and .edu sponsored top-level domains.

The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) are a suite of extension specifications by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for securing data exchanged in the Domain Name System (DNS) in Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The protocol provides cryptographic authentication of data, authenticated denial of existence, and data integrity, but not availability or confidentiality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ae</span> Country code top-level domain for the United Arab Emirates

.ae is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet for the United Arab Emirates. It is administered by .aeDA which is part of the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority of UAE (TDRA).

.my is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Malaysia. MYNIC is the agency responsible for the domain, and is under the Ministry of Communications and Digital (KKD) and regulated by the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.so</span> Internet country code top-level domain for Somalia

.so is the internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Somalia. After a long absence, the .so domain was officially relaunched on November 1, 2010, by .SO Registry, which is regulated by the nation's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. It was launched through various accredited registrars around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DNS zone</span> Part of the Internets Domain Name System (DNS) organization system

A DNS zone is a specific portion of the DNS namespace in the Domain Name System (DNS), which a specific organization or administrator manages. A DNS zone is an administrative space allowing more granular control of the DNS components, such as authoritative nameserver. The DNS is broken up into different zones, distinctly managed areas in the DNS namespace. DNS zones are not necessarily physically separated from one another; however, a DNS zone can contain multiple subdomains, and multiple zones can exist on the same server.

A Name Authority Pointer (NAPTR) is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System of the Internet.

Universal personal telecommunications (UPT) was a special segment of the international telephone number space which had been set aside for universal personal telephone numbers. This service had been allocated country code +87810 and was completed by a 10-digit subscriber number which provided 10 billion unique numbers. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) introduced this concept in 2001, referring to it as "global number portability".

RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre) is the regional Internet registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. Its headquarters are in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with a branch office in Dubai, UAE.

WHOIS is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block or an autonomous system, but is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The current iteration of the WHOIS protocol was drafted by the Internet Society, and is documented in RFC 3912.

CZ.NIC is a Czech interest association of legal persons established by leading Internet service providers in 1998. The main activity of the association is administration of domain names .cz and 0.2.4.e164.arpa (ENUM), administration of .cz top-level domains and education in the area of domain names. Currently, the employees of the association are intensively working on expanding the DNSSEC technology, developing the domain administration system and mojeID service and promoting new technologies and projects beneficial to the Internet infrastructure in the Czech Republic.

eduroam International Wi-Fi authentication service

eduroam is an international Wi-Fi internet access roaming service for users in research, higher education and further education. It provides researchers, teachers, and students network access when visiting an institution other than their own. Users are authenticated with credentials from their home institution, regardless of the location of the eduroam access point. Authorization to access the Internet and other resources are handled by the visited institution. Users do not have to pay to use eduroam.

Domain registration is the process of acquiring a domain name from a domain name registrar.

References

  1. ↑ Patrik Faltstrom; Michael Mealling (2004). The E.164 to Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Application (ENUM). RFC 3761. The Internet Society.
  2. ↑ "NRENum.net and eduCONF call for working group participation". 20 November 2012. Retrieved 29 September 2013.
  3. ↑ Bernie Höneisen (2006). ENUM overview: Introduction, Usage scenarios, trees, and provisioning. Presentation at VoIP and Videoconferencing Workshop in Catania (PDF). SWITCH. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-06. Retrieved 28 September 2013.
  4. ↑ Carol de Groot (2007). TERENA Annual Report 2006 (PDF). TERENA. p. 41.
  5. ↑ Carol de Groot-Crone (2009). TERENA Annual Report 2008 (PDF). TERENA. p. 35.
  6. ↑ "NRENum.net service goes global, recognised as viable alternative to e164.arpa for academia". 15 May 2012. Retrieved 29 September 2013.
  7. ↑ TERENA Annual Report 2012 (PDF). TERENA. 2013. p. 22.
  8. ↑ "NRENum.net service mandate extended". 29 April 2011. Retrieved 28 September 2013.
  9. ↑ "NRENUM.net training at TNC2013 marks maturing of service". 6 May 2013. Retrieved 28 September 2013.
  10. 1 2 "NRENum.net service policy and new global governance". 1 October 2013. Retrieved 1 October 2013.
  11. ↑ "Global NRENum.net Service Policy, Operations and Governance" (PDF). 26 September 2013. Retrieved 27 September 2013.
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