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05/02/2004: "Waiting for the other shoe to drop"

Some guys I know may have just developed the last link in a worldwide, free VoIP system.

E164.org provides DNS glue between POTS numbers and VoIP systems on the Internet. They provide either 100 "free" numbers out of the unused 822 country range, or ''verified'' mapping for real telephone numbers. The system provides both "real" telephone and "free" number mapping to any Voice over IP address of your choosing. Presently they support a single IAX, SIP and H323 entry, with multiple entries and many more types soon.

This allows people to dial regular telephone numbers instead of yet another "free" voip address, and have the call switched over the Internet to an IAX/SIP or H323 service. A person or community PBX,
using software such as Asterisk or
SER (SIP Express Router), could setup a dial plan that first tried the ENUM root for an Internet path, and fall back to a traditional PSTN route. Examples of this sort of Least Cost Routing are on the website.

This allows businesses and people to make and receive telephone calls over the Internet and Internet style networks. Unlike other systems, your calls can be switched directly to the person you are calling instead of passing all of your calls through a single service provider. This means that congestion from busy services is reduced, providing a more reliable voice connection.

This is not a VoIP gateway like Free World Dialup. Calls can be Point to Point between the caller and calling party's system, therefore this system does not introduce congestion issues like many "broadband phone" services out there today.

This system only requires a hostname to route phone numbers to, you can move around by simply updating a dynamic DNS service. This would be great for using an 802.11 VoIP/SIP handset in hotspots. Someday NoCat is going to grow up and provide NAT traversal services (without the c(r)aptive portal) for SIP phones.