ENUM Applications

Power your ENUM solutions with PowerDNS Authoritative Server

E.164 Number Mapping (ENUM) forms a bridge between the separated worlds of ‘legacy’ phone networks and modern internet multimedia applications. This allows voice and other services from both sides to interconnect. ENUM now plays a key role in modern VoIP communication, both for ‘over the top‘ VoIP services, as well as in mobile and fixed networks. PowerDNS enables ENUM to use DNS as a centralized phonebook to connect applications based on traditional ‘phone numbers’ with multimedia applications on the internet.


Call set-up

DNS-based ENUM can be used to set up connections between endpoints in telephone infrastructure. ENUM in VoIP uses DNS queries to determine which servers should be contacted for setting up a VoIP session for a given telephone number.

Number Portability

In many countries, operators are obliged to provide number portability. Number portability lets subscribers keep their number when switching operators (IETF rfc 4694). ENUM is used to provide the central lookup systems for such number portability, based on DNS.

Use in Mobile networks

ENUM enables voice calls as part of VoIP implementations in modern mobile 4G and 5G networks (VoLTE). DNS supports ENUM to resolve and connect VoIP calls, as further explained by the GSMA ENUM Guidelines.


PowerDNS for ENUM look-up services

For ENUM applications, one or more central ‘look-up’ services are required. PowerDNS Authoritative Server provides the DNS services for a well-functioning ENUM setup. It provides fast response times and resilience by deploying a multi-node authoritative solution. Querying multiple databases for number resolution can be added with our caching resolver PowerDNS Recursor.

PowerDNS fully supports ENUM standards and can be used as the central, distributed database for the various use-cases of ENUM. It supports public ENUM solutions reachable on the internet, such as user-ENUM. In addition, PowerDNS also enables private ENUM solutions or carrier ENUM for routing between operators.

PowerDNS Autoritative Server

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