(I’m kidding about the datacenter part – no network equipment was ever harmed in this story).

Chapter 1. Speeding towards the desert; not a Cadillac in sight

It’s 9:30am and Bobby and I are speeding towards a shiny bright city in the middle of the desert (well, virtually anyway). The vehicle of choice? A custom pink MacBook Pro (highly customized and extremely overclocked – this thing’s got speed!). The road, or our case the myriad of random searches through phenomenally large online content, was speeding by with just a little less ferociousness today than it did yesterday. Its not as fresh a feeling as it is could have been. I knew Bobby was oblivious to it; maybe because he doesn’t have that keen sixth-sense I possess when surfing the Internet.

You see, today is a new day on the Internet. It’s one day after the official notice was posted by IANA that no more IPv4 addresses were available for the Internet’s regional registries – the guardians of the numbers that are at the heart of the Internet. Exhaustion had happened and there was a special event to mark this.

It wasn’t a big event. It had a following by the local technology-illuminati and a handful-or-so of local press. It didn’t bring out a hoard of news trucks. No one from CNN, Bloomberg or the BBC was ever dispatched. This wasn’t an event a nightly news anchor even knew about. The event, or what symbolically happened yesterday, is not about the place or about the people attending. Yesterday’s massive event happened everywhere on the globe, including on the couch where I lazed with my custom pink MacBook propped on my knees. It was exactly 24 hours later. The facts were very clear to me.

It was today and I was sitting here noticing the diminished ferocity of the Internet. It could only be explained by one nagging thought (you know, that sixth-sense) that maybe something out there on the global Internet suddenly fell off the edge of a cliff. Sure it was a virtual cliff; but the cliff’s presence was being felt. Something had fallen and there’s nothing I, or anyone else could do to save us all from it. We had run out of IPv4 addresses. Gone. Finished. Done. Exhausted.

Chapter 2. Years and years of planning for one day in early February 2011

I thought I was one of the safe kids; one of the cool, hip and potentially tech-savvy kids. I thought I’d be safe on this day. I’d always prided myself by keeping up on technology, always playing with the new stuff, I’d hung out with other, mainly cooler, kids. I’d waxed poetically late into the night about being ready for this day. Was it all talk?

Chapter 3. A long time ago, in many electronics shops far far away.

I can’t remember when, but what seemed ages ago now, Bobby and I had attended a conference and heard a talk about the demise of IPv4 space. Being interested in the subject, I had researched the topic and planned accordingly. I read up about IPv6. I talked with others about IPv6. I had even found an IPv6 sticker and put it on my laptop. When I wanted some new features for my personal blog, I moved the blog to a new hosting company, one with an IPv6 Ready logo plastered prominently on their signup page. I knew the pink MacBook and even my aging other Windows laptop were IPv6 enabled. I had successfully ignored all those silly blog posting and tweets saying turn off IPv6 and whatever ailed your machine will be fixed. Ha! They were wrong and those that followed that advice would ultimately pay a price. In the house where I was lazing on the couch, I had updated my wireless router a few times. I ultimately tossed it away and ended up buying a shiny-new 4G-enabled hotspot, one with even more features than I would ever use. I didn’t care; I had 4G and it had IPv6!

I was ready.

Chapter 4. Safety in numbers; but how many numbers?

But was I safe? A nagging feeling kept me asking: how could I be safe? Was Bobby safe? Could anyone categorically say they were safe? IPv6 was needed in order to be safe. This was like the ending to the first Alien movie where you knew there was going to be a sequel – you just knew! The sequel to yesterday’s event was going to be a lot different. The monster in this real-world movie was a lack of numbers.

This is what I knew. I knew that I was safe from a world where IPv4 addresses would start to become a scarce commodity. I was sure I had done all the IPv6 preparation needed. I primed myself well before even the most pessimistic timetable had predicted. I was ready years before yesterday.

What I’d forgot was that it’s not just a one-man job to be ready for an IPv6 world.

I needed everyone else to kick-in and do his or her part. I was careful at picking suppliers that understood IPv6, so that meant my suppliers had done their part. In fact many players around the globe had done their part; all that was missing was one small link in the chain. Somewhere out there, vital to my life on the Internet, was someone that didn’t realize IPv6 was fundamentally important. They were still living in the IPv4 world. They didn’t have a plan. They were causing me some pretty nasty nightmares.

Chapter 5. What’s the number, Kenneth?

It was 10:00am. It was officially 24 hours into the new world. There’s been some mention in the press; but no-one’s going to ever bring this story back to life again. Yesterday was a seminal event, one that could never be repeated again. Sure there’s going to be times and places within a few months where geographies or entities will run out of IPv4 space; but no-one’s going notice. No one’s going to sing about this. Yesterday was the best shot anyone had to make this front-page news.

Bobby’s still oblivious to what just happened. I know that Bobby’s in the majority. I’m very much aware that I live in the minority.

The numbers are truly staggering. Billions of people are connected to the global Internet. Billons still want to connect and they should be allowed to. Every day, more and more companies are dependent on the existence of a working Internet to continue earning money. Without the Internet, some modern companies would have never existed, let along be worth hundred of millions of dollar or even the billion dollars they are worth. Heck, one of those companies is worth over 200 billion dollars. Staggering.

The secret is that numbers excite me. I found that out when I was a teenager at high school. I started to find out about numbers, to experiment with numbers and I soon realized big numbers were always more fun than small ones. (That can be true for nearly everything). For example, find somewhere away from the city lights and hang out late at night with your friends. Just look up at the night sky and try to convince them to count all the stars they can see. They can’t, there’s way-to-many to count. Now, pretend you own the Hubble telescope and could look at the whole universe; even then there would be four quadrillion IPv6 addresses for each and every star in the observable universe. IPv6’s addressing numbers are huge, really huge.

We would never run out of IPv6 space; we geeks all knew that. The trouble was that Bobby didn’t care for numbers like I did.

The one thing that Bobby did know is what a marketplace is worth. Bobby can ignore all the gobble-de-gook that I go on-and-on about. It just goes in one ear and out the other. The 32 or 128 bit choices, the 4.3 billion number, the 340 followed by more zero’s than anyone can imagine. No, it’s uninteresting to Bobby. What Bobby cares about is one and only one thing. Does the Internet work? “Well does it?” is the usual response from Bobby to whatever I’m saying.

After yesterday, I have to say “not so much today.” Somewhere out there IPv4 networks existed and no one running them was realizing they needed their own IPv6 plan.

Chapter 6. IPv6? Yeah, we got that!

As the day progressed, I start to recover from the mid-morning pout. I’d sunk pretty low and that’s not my style. I was going to have to deal with the new world. Yesterday’s event was thrust on me and I knew it was really a call to action vs. capitulation and defeat. The light at the end of the tunnel was very visible to me. I knew that I had my part to do in telling the world to IPv6 enable their networks. Even while lazing on the couch, I would still be able to impress upon a few people that today (and not tomorrow) was the day to enable IPv6 on their network.

One person at a time was a good motto; just one person at a time. It was to time to dust off the keys; wipe away the coffee stains from the trackpad and go to work. Work that would have to compensate for the slightly less ferocious Internet we had after yesterday. Time to enable each and every connection out there to help me get the IPv6 message out to the world. Each and every friend needs to help. Each and every colleague needs to help. Each and every friend of a friend needs to help.

IPv4 was yesterday’s news. Today is the day after yesterday, where IPv6 matters to each and every user of the global Internet.

The End.

… to be continued? Or will it? It’s up to you.

IPv6 is, as you can tell, not a new thing; but it’s something that’s showing up more and more within the Internet’s basic infrastructure. Many people have written about IPv6 and I’ve given a few talks about my company’s role in promoting the adoption of IPv6. I’m not going to repeat any of this here as you can always go to a search engine to find out much more about IPv6.

It’s that ability to use a search engine that is worth talking about today.

Google has just released information on how to configure IPv6 as the default access protocol for any of their services. The Google over IPv6 page provides everything you need to know and if you are running IPv6 within your network; it’s well worth enabling.

Google services have been available via a special URL http://ipv6.google.com/ (with specific services accessible via URL’s like http://ipv6.google.com/news for Google News, etc.). If you are running IPv6, then this is not needed anymore – as long as you have the ability to follow Google’s instructions.

Google over IPv6 uses the IPv4 address of your DNS resolver to determine whether a network is IPv6-capable. If you enable Google over IPv6 for your resolver, IPv6 users of that resolver will receive AAAA records for IPv6-enabled Google services.

Give it a try!  It’s not that I’m endorsing any specific search engine; it’s that I’m happy that real-world websites are becoming IPv6 savvy.

IPv6 is our close collective future.

Lottery ticket worth nearly $800,000, purchased in Scotts Valley, still unclaimed
By Peter Kirn- Sentinel correspondent
Posted: 01/08/2009 02:48:58 PM PST

SCOTTS VALLEY – You might want to take a look at your lottery ticket.

Lottery officials say someone out there bought a winning ticket worth almost $800,000 at the Village Bottle Shoppe in Scotts Valley on Sunday, but they haven’t claimed the cash.

I’m going to stick to buying tickets at Scotts Valley’s Quik Stop; maybe it will be there turn soon.

Tangowahine Farm Stay

Back in 2006 my wife and I took the kids around the world for six and a half months. We traveled from California eastwards thru the US and into Europe, then onwards to the Middle East, Asia and finally Australia and New Zealand. Going eastwards meant that New Zealand was going to be the last country we visited and in my opinion, the best. I’d traveled to New Zealand, before I was married, and loved it.

During this trip, we had experienced many different Internet broadband locations; some good and some not so good, some cheap and some amazingly expensive. By the time we got to New Zealand, we thought we had seen it all. We were wrong.

Tangowahine Farm Stays was our first stop in the country. It’s a 250 acre farm North East of Dargaville. This is an idyllic place to stay and at around 120 miles north of Auckland somewhat off to the beaten track. Our hosts, Hugh and Pauline, were perfect and their farm was a thing of beauty. Being idyllic sometimes interferes with being connected. Using a mobile phone meant climbing up one of the hills (which meant saying hi to the cows); or wandering onto the neighbors’ property. This choice was dictated on which carrier you were after. So, imagine my surprise when Hugh proudly states “we have wireless Internet here”. I was shocked!

Keep in mind that I’ve been building IP backbones for years and years and I know that when you are somewhere as rural as this; you’re not going to have wireless-anything. Hugh’s solution was a dial-up modem that sat behind a wireless router. It worked; but let’s just say, it was not optimal! It was simply the only way to operate in a place like this. Guests could use the wireless network; however, anything more than fetching email or the occasional web browsing was all that we could do.

After a few days of enjoying the local area, enjoying our hosts’ yummy food and wandering around the farm’s property we took a day off and visited Whangarei, which is around 30 miles away. That trip into town and the random finding of a company called Uber PC kicked off a major change to the farms wireless connectivity!

The rest of this story can be found in a news article in the Kaipara Lifestyler about Tangowahine’s new wireless broadband system. I’m quite proud of my assistance in this area! The article called Kaipara’s Broadband Breakthrough is worth a read.

Needless to say, I now chat and video conference with Hugh and Pauline via Skype using their new found rural broadband service!

If you still want an idyllic place to stay; Tangowahine Farm Stays is still that place; you just have to remember to soak up the property and not turn on your laptop!

This is what I shared with friends around town.

Enjoy.

From: Martin J. Levy
Date: Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 12:25 PM
Subject: Panic erupts in Scotts Valley Tuesday afternoon – Coffee Cat and Peet’s thrive

Next Tuesday (Feb 26th) at 5:30pm all the Starbucks in the US will close for barista training.  Locally, this will set off a panic among coffee drinkers in Scotts Valley. The first signs will be seen at Scotts Valley’s copious traffic lights where frequent u-turns will cause traffic snarls at both ends of town. It takes many u-turns to navigate around town between coffee shops. Maybe the cops should direct traffic; after all they will be unable to sit at Starbucks anyway. (I love our cops and I also love that they aren’t busy).

Peet’s and Coffee Cat sales will surge and I wonder if this is finally the moment when the little coffee drive-thru on Mt Hermon has it’s day in the sun (what’s that place called?).

Statistically speaking this is nearly a 50% drop in coffee shop availability for the city.  I’m discounting coffee from the donut shop – you know why!

The good news is that this closure ends at 9pm. For us who live at the top end of town, that’s well past its usual closing time!

So to my fellow Starbucks followers, let’s stay calm, plan accordingly and when we walk up to the newly-trained staff on Wednesday morning, let’s just give them all a big hug.  After all, they also will suffer during this coffee-shop-outage. They will have to go nearly four hours without the warmth and support of us – the local clientele. They will miss us; of that I’m sure.

Signed,

Martin “grande earl gray – room for milk” Levy

Here’s the local map; should you need help with the u-turns

So, what was the downside to this discovery?  It’s that I found this via a Google gmail contextual ad.  I don’t know what part of my email triggered this; however in this case, it was worth clicking on the link. 

The dish looks colorful, easy to make and simply wonderful.  I can’t wait to try it!

The Christmas message from 1957 is loaded up there; so that could mean there will be even more historical videos showing up in the future.

The chicken curry stew ($11.95), possibly Chez Sovan’s signature dish, is recreated with falling-apart tender thigh meat, potatoes and carrots in a luscious yellow curry sauce. Long after the bits were gone, leftover sauce spooned over jasmine rice (brown rice is also offered) was nearly as satisfying.

Every dish is wonderful; however the chicken curry stew is my favorite dish!

I had posted my own quick review (on the chowhound site) in June 2007 when Jia Tella’s first opened.  It’s been consistently good since then!

New rules from the Transportation and Security Administration that take effect on January 1 ban travelers from carrying loose lithium batteries in checked baggage. Passengers are allowed to pack two spare batteries in their carry-on bag, as long as they’re in clear plastic baggies.

…please don’t let the TSA screw up the California high-speed rail experience whenever it shows up!

Microsoft has issued a support document for the 13 or so (just kidding) people using Windows Home Server

…I think the 13 is a close number!