I'll have to check again -- as recently as a couple of months ago, my VOIP line was perfectly happy to support pulse dial (ditto the land line). That aside -- there's a great deal to be said for maintaining simple and easy to manage interfaces with a substantial history of tooling and support -- ones that don't require expensive upgrades, time from specialists, or (I'm looking at you, SNMP) can't be understood by (most) humans in their native form. cheers!
On Aug 30, 2026, at 06:52, Tom Beecher via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Your telephone landline (if you still have one) or VoIP to POTS adapter usually supports rotary dialing. It's been nearly half a century since anyone made a rotary phone but the POTS equipment still supports rotary dialing.
Why?
Because backward compatibility is valuable. There's a disadvantage to building a POTS adapter which is less than 100% backward compatible. And the cost to implement a user-interface skin atop modern signaling which implements rotary dialing is utterly trivial.
So I agree with you: why shouldn't the RIR use an RDAP server that also provides a whois-compatible user interface skin? And do so indefinitely?
The PSTN hasn't supported pulse 'indefinitely'. In the 60s when DTMF was deployed, the PSTN supported both as a transition mechanism for 30 years. In the 90s, LECs started retiring the pulse equipment, moving to DTMF only. Once a given network did that, users then were required to use a pulse-DTMF adapter to continue using the system with old equipment. While some systems still haven't fully retired pulse, most have.
Almost everything in tech moves through these transition cycles. Start with A , run A + B in parallel, retire A. Demanding that A and B run in parallel indefinitely just because "I don't want to change my thing that relies on A" is silly.
On Sun, Aug 30, 2026 at 12:16 AM William Herrin via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 29, 2026 at 12:04 AM borg--- via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Actually, I think RIRs could actually run proxy themselfs, and generate WHOIS reply based on RDAP data. Why not?
Your telephone landline (if you still have one) or VoIP to POTS adapter usually supports rotary dialing. It's been nearly half a century since anyone made a rotary phone but the POTS equipment still supports rotary dialing.
Why?
Because backward compatibility is valuable. There's a disadvantage to building a POTS adapter which is less than 100% backward compatible. And the cost to implement a user-interface skin atop modern signaling which implements rotary dialing is utterly trivial.
So I agree with you: why shouldn't the RIR use an RDAP server that also provides a whois-compatible user interface skin? And do so indefinitely?
Regards, Bill Herrin
-- For hire. https://bill.herrin.us/resume/ _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list
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