How ENUM Works

ENUM uses DNS-based architecture and protocols for mapping a complete international telephone number (for example, [phone]) to a series of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).

The protocol itself is defined in the document E.164 number and DNS (RFC 3761) that provides facilities to resolve E.164 telephone numbers into other resources or services on the Internet. The syntax of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) is defined in RFC 2396. ENUM uses Naming Authority Pointers (NAPTR) records defined in RFC 2915 in order to identify available ways or services for contacting a specific node identified through the E.164 number.