Data owners provision ENUM data in the PathFinder global ENUM registry in order to offer other networks access to the information via the PathFinder Query Service. The Data Owners are able to offer a secure, reliable and controlled ENUM service to its interconnect partners via an outsource approach.
PathFinder Hosting is a managed service. This ensures that users do not have to manage capacity upgrades, hardware, software, data centers or any of the usual operational challenges associated with infrastructure provision. PathFinder is simply provided according to a Telco grade SLA. Query responses to interconnect partners are delivered in accordance with the SLA.
PathFinder Hosting is delivered as a cloud service offering points of presence around the globe where copies of the data are stored and can be queried by the user’s interconnect partners. The data owner determines who can query their data. Since most service providers around the world will connect to PathFinder to gain access to the root, the hosting service solves the investment and operational issues for the data owner of maintaining registry connectivity to each interconnect partner. Use cases.
How it Works:
Data owners are given a secure data provisioning interface via a GUI for manual control and/or a Provisioning API interface for integration with back office systems. The data owner uploads and manipulates its data via the provisioning interfaces to the international PathFinder registry sites. The user sets access controls to enable specific partners to be able to query their data.
Two types of data may be hosted in PathFinder: Pointer information directing querying parties to a Tier 2 registry, see our Tier 1 data hosting service, or detailed routing information against numbers, see our Tier 2 data hosting service.
Benefits of using ENUM hosting services:
- Save costs and resources by outsourcing the operation, connectivity and maintenance of a registry
- Take advantage of economies of scale
- Position data geographically closer to international query users to achieve lower latency responses necessary to minimise call set up delay
- Distribute data in multiple nodes around the globe for higher resilience
- Use PathFinder selective publishing tools to control access to addressing data for specified trading partners according to business arrangements
- Customise publishing using the rich policy tools in PathFinder to publish different data sets to different querying parties
- Save costs of establishing and maintaining connections to multiple international query users
- Save multiple iterative queries – hosting in PathFinder means results can be sent back immediately from a root query
- Protect master registries in the home network from security risks
- Flexibility to use PathFinder to host private customised addressing data, enabling users to implement proprietary policy for internal routing use cases.
- Extensibility that allows bespoke configuration of ENUM NAPTR parameters, enhancing their ability to introduce proprietary services and new industry standard services rapidly to the market.
The service delivers flexibility and cost savings through ENUM data hosting services for number holders or organisations responsible for Tier 1 registry services. While the infrastructure is provided by the GSMA PathFinder service, the hosted data remains entirely under the control of the data owner.
