Megaconference

[Ben Fineman <>]

SUMMARY: 

Based on input from many members of the research and education community, 
Internet2 is announcing the deprecation of the Global Dialing Scheme for the 
United States. The community recommendation for a replacement signaling 
technology is ENUM under the NRENum.net program. This deprecation will take 
effect on January 1, 2017.

DETAIL: 

The Global Dialing Scheme has been a very effective signaling program for the 
research and education community. It was born in the year 2000, largely from 
the efforts of Victor Reis at HEAnet, Egon Verharen at SURFNet and Steve 
Williams at The Welsh Video Network. Bob Dixon at the Ohio State University 
and Tim Poe at the University of North Carolina were instrumental in bringing 
GDS to the United States. GDS was a primary means by which 
inter-organizational video communication was made possible using H.323 video 
conferencing technology.

Video communication trends in recent years have seen a decline in H.323 
endpoints and a similar decline in deployment of associated signaling 
infrastructure including H.323 gatekeepers. Most research and education 
organizations are leveraging SIP infrastructure for new deployments. As an 
H.323-only technology, GDS has not scaled well in these new environments, and 
utilization in the United States has dropped to very few inter-organizational 
calls. Please note that the deprecation of GDS will not affect 
intra-organizational calls - organizations can continue to leverage their own 
gatekeepers to communicate between their own endpoints.

ENUM supports both H.323 and SIP, and leverages DNS for lookup services under 
the NRENum.net tree. Community feedback suggests that ENUM is better suited 
to accommodate signaling in the forward-looking communications environment 
for research and education, which will include increasing SIP endpoints 
overall as well as increasing IP voice-only endpoints. Internet2 administers 
NRENum.net for the +1 country code, which includes the United States. 
Organizations wishing to join NRENum.net in the +1 country code should fill 
out a delegation request here: 
https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form?EQBCT=c85a7d40c04b41fa920d88886bb5b437

If you have any questions of comments about this transition, please send me 
an email or fill out this form: 
https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form?EQBCT=a03204ba8f8c49088a49a9227e8e7366

Thank you,
Ben Fineman

/*-----------------------
Benjamin J. Fineman
Program Manager, NET+ Video, Voice, and Collaboration Services
Internet2

Request a meeting with me: https://calendly.com/benfineman


 (email/video/chat)
http://www.internet2.edu

734.352.4975 (desk)
734.417.0811 (mobile)
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