Integration discussions and joint development activities are underway with multiple Internet-Telephony technology vendors interested in leveraging the GITD to translate telephone numbers into Internet addresses. Self-Identification NetNumber is a Delaware corporation with corporate offices located in Lowell, Massachusetts. A global directory service that enables the translation of a PSTN telephone number into a corresponding Internet address eliminates this impediment. The precise nature and structure of such a directory has been the object of considerable speculation, research and discussion. A number of companies, technical groups, industry organizations and standards bodies have made contributions to this effort.
Telephone numbers follow a well-defined format.
Therefore, translating a telephone number into an Internet address is a rather straightforward task. However, complexities emerge as the concept is expanded globally and extended to include multiple Internet-Telephony service providers, each providing different services tied to the same telephone number. The system proposed herein utilizes DNS within a two-tier control model to translate a telephone number into an application specific Internet Address. This system allows an Internet-Telephony application or platform to iteratively access a hierarchy of DNS name servers until the desired resource record information is found or until the search is exhausted. Through the use of standard DNS resolution, a single query is sufficient to locate the desired Internet address information.